“I will speak next week”, confides Benoît Hamon. It is Wednesday that the former socialist candidate for the presidential election of 2017 should officially announce his presence on the list of Julien Bayou, the leader of Europe Ecology-Les Verts (EELV), for the next regional ones in Ile-de-France . An irony of political history since four years ago, it was Yannick Jadot, then EELV candidate in the race for the Elysée, who rallied in the first round to the Socialist …
“The discussions are very advanced, explains one in the entourage of Bayou confirming information from France Info. But certain points remain to be settled. “Among them, the department in which the former rebellious minister of François Hollande will compete – who should run under the banner of his Génération.s movement – both for the departmental and for the regional, the two ballots being held on the same day , a Sunday in June, if the pandemic allows it …
A rally that worries the left
“Politically, the approach is very consistent,” said a green elected official. At the Regional Council, Benoît Hamon – very discreet since 2010 – and Julien Bayou sit in the same group. No more bickering with EELV who had criticized Hamon for having launched his list to the Europeans of 2019. Last August, Hamon spent an entire afternoon at the Summer Days of Ecologists in Pantin (Seine-Saint-Denis). At the end of 2020, Julien Bayou had signed an agreement with five other environmentalist parties, including Génération.s created by Benoît Hamon at the end of 2017, after his poor presidential score, which earned him the sulphurous nickname of “Mr. 6%. “
Symbolically, the “gesture” of Benoît Hamon is not trivial. Even heckled, the former Minister of Education remains a figure on the left who can only worry the other competing lists, that of Insoumise Clémentine Autain, allied to the Communists, but especially Ile-de-France in common, led by Audrey Pulvar and supported by Anne Hidalgo, the socialist mayor of Paris. “We do not wish to make any comments”, sweeps in the entourage of Audrey Pulvar.
Since his failure in the 2019 European elections – his list had received only 3.27% of the vote, depriving him of any deputy – he had announced that he was withdrawing from active politics, but Benoît Hamon had not completely left public life. Thus, during the municipal elections, without being a candidate, he had beaten the electoral platforms all over France. In October, he published a book, “What it takes for courage. Advocacy for universal income ”(Ecuador ed.).
“A logic of merger-absorption”
“His main ideas, the ecological emergency and universal income, find all their topicality with the health crisis,” said one of his relatives. The former boss of the Young Socialists would also have taken on another task, much more complicated … “His objective is to support where there can be a rally of the left and, for 2022, the first step can to be the region, ”says those around him.
An approach that leaves skeptical, especially among the Socialists, the party with which he broke over three years ago. “Benoît Hamon plays leapfrog, it’s not my conception of politics, tackle Patrick Kanner, the president of the Socialist senators. I also see it in Hauts-de-France where, for the regional ones, the representative of Génération.s has joined the environmentalist list. In the Senate, the national coordinator of the movement, elected in 2017 on a list of union of the left, now sits with the Greens. For lack of sufficient troops, Hamon is following a logic that will lead to a merger-absorption of the small by the big, of Génération.s by the Greens. »CQFD…
Original article by : www.leparisien.fr
