© Cyril ZANNETTACCI
Rally for a “popular primary”, December 11 on the Place de la République in Paris.
“We had in mind to bring together more people than the LR congress to become the first process of this presidential year under Covid”. Samuel Grzybowski, founder of the Coexist movement and one of the co-pilots of the People’s Primary initiative, puffs out his chest. After nearly six months of citizen sponsorship campaign and registration phase, the consultation has managed to bring together 467,000 registered voters who will therefore be able to vote during the vote scheduled for January 27 at 10 a.m. to 30 at 5 p.m. The figure will be verified on Monday by “the High Authority for Voting Control” say the organizers.
???? Final figure of the number of registered and registered for the nomination vote of the Primary Popular!
⏱️ We are the biggest tie-breaking process in this presidential election.
Alone or alone, we go faster. But together, we’re going to the Élysée ????* pic.twitter.com/woCdoqlWDP
— The Popular Primary (@PrimairePop) January 23, 2022
On Saturday, 376,000 people registered to participate in this citizen vote which tries to unify the left, when on January 18 they were “only” 288,000. The organizers of the popular primary were therefore already assured several days before the closing of its registration phase launched on December 15, to have a greater voting potential than the environmental primary of last September (122,000) and the LR congress of December (nearly 140,000).
“We wanted to go as high as possible because we know that the final number will have an impact on the legitimacy of the primary, explains Samuel Grzybowski to Liberation. We never sought to compete with the environmentalist primary, it was a legitimate election whose results we waited to know who to integrate into our process.. The ecologists, who have never seen the popular primary with a good eye, except for Sandrine Rousseau. Yannick Jadot has always justified her choice not to participate in the process explaining that he already had his legitimacy from the green primary.
Seven candidates on the starting line
At the end of February 2021, six social entrepreneurs and activists launched the association “2022 or never”. Their goal: to help unify the left. Taking note of the fact that the many left-wing parties refuse to arrange among themselves to reach a common candidacy, they launch the popular Primary. A process through which citizens will choose the candidate they would like to invest. They are also responsible for selecting the political figures they wish to see on the starting line.
Video: Zemmour: “If Mr. Macron is re-elected, there will be the GPA” (Le Figaro)
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October 10, the organizers reveal the list of the 10 most “sponsored” candidates. We find there Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Yannick Jadot, Christiane Taubira, Anne Hidalgo, the entrepreneur Charlotte Marchandise, the environmental activist Anna Agueb-Porterie, the founder of the small party Nouvelle Donne, Pierre Larrouturou, the economist Gaël Giraud and the deputies rebellious Clémentine Autain and François Ruffin. Not wishing to become President of the Republic, the last three will finally be removed from the list. They are therefore only today seven on the starting line.
Problem, several leading personalities appear in this final list when they asked not to be. This is particularly the case of the rebellious Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Yannick Jadot who have never hidden their distrust of the process. “Leave me alone, we have nothing to do with this”, says the first when the second describes the popular Primary as “losing machine”. The two candidates were joined a few days ago in the “anti” camp by PS candidate Anne Hidalgo after a dizzying slalom.
The mayor of Paris first rejected the idea of participating, then called on all candidates to comply before finally say that she wouldn’t go anymore and that she would not take the result into account on the pretext that Jadot did not want to participate and finally asked «retire [r] her name” from the famous list. The fault (officially) with a video broadcast on social networks where we see Samuel Grzybowski explaining that elected officials had to be encouraged not to give sponsorships to certain candidates on the left.
Majority Judgment Voting
So ultimately only Christiane Taubira remains as the “main” candidate. Entering the presidential race in December with an enigmatic video in which she explained “considering” running” the former Keeper of the Seals has since affirmed that she “would bend to the result”. This primary is “the last space where the union of the left can be built” according to her. The former member of Guyana is the candidate who has received the most citizen sponsorships. Among the various candidates on the left, we also suspect the popular Primary of only rolling for Taubira.
From Thursday to next Sunday, the floor will therefore be given to registered citizens. But, they will not be asked to choose who is in their eyes the personality best able to represent them. Voting will be by majority judgment which consists in giving a mention to all the candidates on the starting line. Here the question asked will be “to win ecology and social justice in the presidential election, I believe that each of these personalities would be…”. They will therefore have to say for each of the seven candidates if they consider it to be “very good”, “good”, “fairly good”, “passable”, or “insufficient”. The winner will be the one with the best overall judgment.
Update Monday, January 24 at 1:20 a.m. with the final number of registrants.