The “insoumis” had promised her that she would be well received, and they kept their word. Lucie Castets, the left-wing candidate for Matignon, was not disappointed by her trip to Châteauneuf-sur-Isère, in the Drôme, on Saturday August 24, to the Amfis, the summer universities of La France insoumise (LFI), where the movement had prepared a rock star program for her. She was there for her third activist swim of the week, after the Ecologists’ summer days in Tours on Thursday and the French Communist Party’s summer universities in Montpellier on Friday. In Tours, she even tried her hand at a speech at a meeting in front of 2,000 to 3,000 people for the first time, without a hitch.
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On Saturday, in the Drôme, in front of a packed room, the 37-year-old senior civil servant took part in an hour and a half of a friendly question-and-answer session concocted by her two LFI allies, MEP Manon Aubry and Haute-Garonne MP Hadrien Clouet, using humour and irony, or becoming serious when it came to describing her programme. “Lucie Castets to Matignon, otherwise Macron will be impeached”chanted the room.
The candidate of the New Popular Front (NFP) was, however, only in front of acquired audiences. Friday morning, at the Elysée, in front of Emmanuel Macron, the game was more difficult. For ninety minutes, the candidate for Matignon was subjected to questions from the head of state. The president of the Ecologist group in the National Assembly, Cyrielle Chatelain, describes an exchange “of great quality”particularly on institutional and international issues. “The first face-to-face meeting of a cohabitation”adds the MP for Isère. According to several participants, Lucie Castets fully assumed the role of Prime Minister. Olivier Faure, the first secretary of the PS, and his counterpart from the Ecologists, Marine Tondelier, both think that“Emmanuel Macron was surprised”.
“People love him”
Since she was chosen by the NFP on July 23, Lucie Castets has not been idle. She canceled her vacation and spent her summer working on the program, on herself. Saturday, nothing remained of the hesitant and robotic diction of the first interviews. “You’ll see, politics is violent.”warned Manon Aubry, who met her when she was at Oxfam. “I will learn”the novice replied. ” Determination “, “solidity” are the words that come up most often, on the left, to describe Lucie Castets, among many superlatives.
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