Candidates for the national assembly had until 6 p.m. this Sunday, June 16 to declare themselves. It will ultimately be without Adrien Quatennens, with 330 Reconquest… and without new allies for Renaissance.
The early legislative campaign officially opened this Monday, June 17, a few hours after the closing of the offices receiving applications in the prefectures. Candidates for the national assembly had until 6 p.m. this Sunday to declare themselves.
In 2022, there were 6,293 of them running for one of the 577 seats at stake, compared to 7,882 in 2017. The Ministry of the Interior should quickly communicate the number of candidates two years later, but there could be even fewer on the starting line, the one-week delay between the announcement of the dissolution of the national assembly and the start of the campaign not having allowed a number of parties to organize themselves. Above all, despite this tight race against time, the main left-wing formations (PS, LFI, EELV, PCF) sealed this alliance of the New Popular Front, managing to overcome the differences or the ego wars, on which had perhaps – bet on Emmanuel Macron to clear the way for his candidates.
On the left, the Quatennens case sold
Even the case of Adrien Quatennens, whose inauguration tensed up the partners of LFI and even the Insoumis internally on Saturday, ended up being resolved. This Sunday morning, the outgoing deputy from the North, sentenced last year to four months in prison for domestic violence, finally threw in the towel. “I no longer intend for my candidacy to be used against LFI and the New Popular Front to harm them at a time when all energy must be mobilized to beat the extreme right.”he justified.
His mentor, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, welcomed “a courageous decision”. And he himself, on France 3, seemed ready to take a step back so as not to penalize the left in this campaign. “If you think I shouldn’t be prime minister, I won’t be.”he said, before adding: “People repeated for days and days that I was divisive. I was accused of everything and anything, of anti-Semitism, of this, of that […]. I will never be the problem, I will always be on the side of the solution.” The former presidential candidate, however, was unable to hold back his blows against his “comrade” François Ruffin, applying more or less openly to Matignon who had harshly criticized him the day before.
Zemmour delays
If the left leaves (almost) united, on the other side of the political spectrum, it is more complex. Éric Zemmour, after the 6 p.m. gong, announced that his Reconquest party ultimately only nominated 330 candidates, despite the schism with Marion Maréchal who joined the RN behind his back, “in order to be certain not to harm the right and not to favor the victory of Islamo-leftism”, he commented. The Republicans, on the other hand, announced “the presence of more than 400 representatives”, particularly in the approximately 70 to 80 constituencies where the LR-RN candidates led by Éric Ciotti will appear. He himself will find a business manager on his way to Nice. The LR also announced that they had not “no agreement with Renaissance, including in Hauts-de-Seine where we present LR candidates against outgoing ministers including Gabriel Attal“, warned Michèle Tabarot on LCI.
Inextricable vice
The hand extended by Emmanuel Macron this week “to women and men of good will who together will have been able to say no to extremes” therefore seems for the moment not to find any takers, even the social democrats opposed to Nupes two years ago, this time fully committing to the Popular Front like his predecessor François Hollande, candidate in Corrèze. The head of state perhaps consoled himself with the polls still putting the RN far ahead with the little sentence from Kylian Mbappé who, from Germany, said “against the extremes”but all the same… at the time of launching a fortnight of an express campaign, his party seems caught in an inextricable vice.
