A four-day “people’s primary” on Sunday picked former French minister of justice Christiane Taubira as the favorite to lead the French left’s presidential election campaign, but doubts remained that she can win wider support as a unifying figure.
A total of 467,000 people signed up to take part in the online vote, which started on Thursday. They ranked five professional politicians and two civil society candidates on a scale from “very good” to “inadequate.”
Taubira, who had entered the contest as the favorite, emerged as the only candidate with a “better than good” ranking.
Photo: AFP
Next came the Green party’s Yannick Jadot, hard-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon, Member of the European Parliament Pierre Larrouturou and Socialist Anne Hidalgo who is the mayor of Paris.
The exercise, initiated by political advocates, including environmentalists, feminists and anti-racism groups, was to foster the emergence of a candidate capable of rallying all the other hopefuls and their voters behind them, giving the left a fighting change to unseat French President Emmanuel Macron in the April election.
However, the primary has been dogged by serious drawbacks.
The biggest was the upfront refusal by leading candidates Melenchon, Jadot and Hidalgo to pay any attention to its result.
“As far as I’m concerned, the popular primary is a non-starter and has been for a while,” Jadot said on Saturday, while Melenchon has called the initiative “obscure” and “a farce.”
However, Taubira said from the start she would accept the primary’s verdict, which analysts said could prompt her to declare a formal bid for the presidency.
“We want a united left, we want a strong left and we have a great road in front of us,” Taubira told advocates after the result on Sunday, adding that she would call on the other candidates to “create unity.”
Polls predict that all left-wing candidates would be eliminated in the first round of presidential voting in April.
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