Editorial of the “World”. An eye on the COVID-19, the other on the presidential campaign, Emmanuel Macron delivered, Wednesday, December 15, on TF1 and LCI, to a very long plea. Even before being issued, the exercise had put the nerves of his alive opponents, and for good reason: the president is not yet a candidate but he is already on one level in the campaign. Refusing to be struggled in the management of the sanitary crisis, it gives the blows and leads the offensive without ever appointing his opponents but by targeting one in particular, Valérie Pécresse, the candidate the Republicans (LR), become the most dangerous since its victory at the primary.
At less than four months of the presidential election, the youngest president of the French Republic does not want to be shocked by the right the Grail of Movement and Transformation. It must argue, prove that its mandate, marked by a singular break – the policy of the “whatever it costs” after the liberalization of the economy – has not been a “five-year fifth”, like the ‘Tell the President of the Ile-de-France region. The good economic results of the year – strong growth and fall of unemployment – plead for him.
In the face of the immobilism trial, it can oppose the reform of the High Public Service on the right and that of Unemployment Insurance. But a big lack tarnished the balance sheet: retirement by points, announced four years ago and unrealized. To fill the void, the president candidate expands the spectrum, straking the maturity of April 2022. He draws a new reform of pensions that only resembles that of 2017. He added the financing of the dependence. , another construction site. He also wants to change the governance of the hospital, plans innovations in the management of education and training that will continue to be the high priority. In doing so, he puts his campaign themes with, in watermark, this message: since “something is changing”, what good will change driver?
The engine of an intimate transformation
His posture remains, as in 2017, that of a transformer who wants to rehabilitate success, merit and responsibility. The alarm clock of the right, however, does not forget that it is left voters who have elected it four years ago. By challenged the attitude of “Father Whipped” against the debt, condemning the brutality of the candidate LR who wants to cut “to the ax” in the number of public service, renting the values ”mutual aid” and ” of solidarity “, it gives wages to the Social Democrats.
remains the hardest, correct its image to mitigate the level of rejection that its name arouses in several electoral strata. The spectrum of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, another unliked modernizing of the French, beaten in 1981, prowl. To move it away, Emmanuel Macron uses all the registers: the MEA culpa after the unfortunate sentences of the beginning of the mandate, but also the plea when he says that his “values are not those of a president of the rich”.
The outgoing president is mainly trying to argue that crises crossed alongside the French side have been the engine of an intimate transformation: it would be less fiery, more humane. The insistence to say it shows, however, that there is its Achilles heel.