Manuel Bompard tows near the Old Port
In the northern districts, Delogu is fighting step by step. Seeing a mother struggling to make a space, the former taxi driver comes to the rescue, “go ahead auntie, steer in one go”, then introduces himself: “I’m the MP who showed the flag Palestinian in the Assembly…” The woman recognizes him, as does her teenage daughter. The episode made him a star among young people. “In neighborhoods where you have to seek out voters one by one, my notoriety on TikTok is important. Young people make their parents vote. »
The day before, Manuel Bompard was towing near the Old Port, in the streets of the very popular Noailles district. Here, we kiss him, we shake his hand: “Don’t worry Manu, we’ll be there on the 30th.” Bompard would like to do without a second round. In 2022, he had an absolute majority in the first round, but too many abstentions made a second round mandatory.
Two LFI candidates face to face
Since then, he has been much solicited by his voters for housing issues. “There is an eight-year wait for social housing, three to four years if the file is a priority. It’s hell,” he says, pointing to Rue d’Aubagne, where eight residents died in 2018 when an unsanitary building collapsed.
In a gentrified constituency in the city center, Allan Popelard, another candidate invested by La France Insoumise, seems sure of himself, on the sidelines of a CGT demonstration: “With unity and clarity, we will win,” he boasts, while a brass band plays revolutionary songs. The problem is, in his “constituency”, there are two LFI candidates: Popelard, invested by the New Popular Front, and Hendrik Davi, an outgoing MP but rejected for his criticism of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Davi chose to run anyway. Since then, it’s been “oaï” (chaos), as they say here. The neighborhood is tearing itself apart, on the ground or in the local media. The mayor, Benoît Payan (Union of the Left outside LFI) publicly supported Davi. “We’ll talk about it again in the municipal elections,” warns Delogu.
The Left Pays for the Instrumentalization of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Radical change in atmosphere at the RN, less noisy… and even silent. Coming to Saint-Barnabé, a bobo enclave in the east of the city, to support Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, minister and candidate for her own succession, Gabriel Attal described the RN candidates as “ghosts”.
In fact: the posters and leaflets arrived late. While waiting for them, the candidates remained silent in the press and invisible on the ground. In the chiaroscuro of their windowless offices, Franck Allisio, head of the RN federation of Bouches-du-Rhône, is irritated by the criticism: “Our candidates are still struggling to open campaign accounts, it’s wasting a lot of our time.”
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He assures that if Olivier Rioult, candidate in the southern districts, is still absent, it is because he is “crisscrossing the region to find a bank”. In this constituency of the corniche, with its opulent gated residences, the RN has seen its members increase. “The good bourgeoisie is a little lost there, and they did not like the left instrumentalizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”, assures Franck Allisio, referring to the Jewish community, very present in the southern districts.
“The RN applies the Italian strategy”
To justify his media absence, Arezki Selloum, candidate against Sébastien Delogu, confirms that “the first week, it was only administrative”. Gisèle Lelouis, outgoing RN MP, assumes: “I don’t like the debate of ideas, I prefer the field. With the activists, without the press.”
Monique Griseti will face Sabrina Agresti-Rubache again. In 2022, she lost by 476 votes, this time she is very confident: “Am I invisible? For you, not for the residents. I tour the cities, I go everywhere, I have lived here since I was born. I know the residents, they are afraid, insecurity is a reality. » The omnipresent Franck Allisio bounces back: “Monique’s circus is the beating heart of the middle class, the one who has been taking it hard for twenty years. »
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Near the new marina, built for the Olympics, a close friend of Renaud Muselier, the president (ex-LR) of the region, a great football connoisseur, draws a parallel with the 1982 World Cup: “The RN is applying the Italian strategy that allowed them to win. When you score a goal and you’re leading 1-0, you fall back on defense and don’t take any more risks. After the Europeans, the RN chose to stop talking, to secure its score.” It’s the catenaccio, padlock in Italian. You lock everything up, and you win.
Macron’s great political failure
How can you say you love a city so much and understand it so little? Since his first mandate, Emmanuel Macron has sworn to love Marseille. It was there that he spent his first vacation as president, there that he made numerous visits, to cities undermined by drug trafficking, to the Vélodrome to see the Pope, to the Old Port to welcome the Olympic flame, everywhere to follow his Marseille plan on a grand scale which was to, with billions, open up the northern neighborhoods and renovate the hundreds of dilapidated schools.
And yet, Marseille despises this enamored president: in 2017, the future president had only arrived 3e in the first round, behind Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen. In 2022, still in the first round, he narrowly rose to 2e, with 2,000 votes more than Le Pen, and well behind Mélenchon. Since then, Renaissance has been in decline. At the Europeans, Valérie Hayer only came 4the (10.3%), far behind Jordan Bardella, Manon Aubry and Raphaël Glucksmann. A revealer of Macron’s failure. This does not bode well for Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, Secretary of State for the City and… candidate.
