Lhe meteoric spread of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 has rekindled the specter of a presidential election under Covid-19. We must therefore welcome the initiative of the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, to bring together, on Tuesday January 11, the leaders of the political parties as well as the declared presidential candidates to try to define common rules likely to save the campaign.
While constitutional law protects freedom of assembly, some candidates have chosen to cancel or postpone their January meetings. Others prefer, on the contrary, to maintain them by imposing gauges, by distributing FFP2 masks or by asking for the sanitary pass at the entrance. Harmonization is desirable, as well as a minimum of understanding around how the election of April 10 and 24 will unfold, over which the specter of abstention hangs over the records recorded in the 2020 municipal and regional elections. from 2021.
This quest to unite in a new difficult moment for the country should not, however, be misleading. Ninety days before the presidential election, the varnish of unity has definitely shattered and the executive is not for nothing. He now acts as if the virus had become a political object in its own right. He no longer apprehends it only as the scourge to be fought by uniting forces. On the contrary, he uses it as a weapon of fragmentation, a lever to reshape the political imagination and structure a new cleavage likely to trap his opponents.
Two levers
The shattering statements of the President of the Republic, who assured, Tuesday, January 4 in an interview with Parisian, to want “Piss off” the unvaccinated, have brought the fight against Covid-19 into a new dimension, much more political and controversial. This is why we should no longer just mention the risks of a presidential campaign under Covid-19. We must also question the problems raised by the management of an epidemic under electoral influence.
A big danger threatened the executive at the start of the year: that the ending quinquennium would become the symbol of impotence because of the pranks of a virus that has continued to appear for two years, to disappear and then to reappear in forms. always different and more or less resistant to vaccines. As long as the accusation was formulated, relayed and then anchored in people’s minds, the stalemate threatened and, with it, the risk of a sweep, against a background of collective depression.
You have 57.31% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.