On rue Sainte-Anne, at the Paris headquarters of La République en Marche, there were few illusions. The municipal councils, which traditionally favor outgoing elected officials, promised to be difficult for the young political party. Arriving most of the time in third or even fourth position in the first round of March 15, the LREM candidates find themselves in fact in a delicate situation, at the time when the list mergers are being negotiated for a filing scheduled for no later than Tuesday 2 June at 6 p.m.
However, if the possibility of great conquests had been buried by party executives after reading the bad polls, remains a stated ambition: to elect at least “10,000 municipal councilors” stamped LREM. Despite the executive’s feeling of being in a hurry to end an election that has become a ball and socket, this goal is crucial in order to obtain large voters ahead of the Senate elections scheduled for September. But also to begin the local establishment of the presidential movement before the regional and departmental deadlines in 2021.
Releases left
The presidential party therefore finds itself forced into the game of alliances between two towers. But with who ? Despite the investiture of a third of candidates from the left, list mergers with socialists and environmentalists have proven anecdotal. Certainly, the national management of Europe Ecology The Greens had immediately ruled out the possibility of agreements with LREM. However, certain local situations could have justified such arrangements. While the outgoing socialist mayor Martine Aubry closed the door for them, the Lille ecologists nevertheless refused the hand extended by the candidate LREM Violette Spillebout, however from the left.
In Bordeaux, the possibility of ending 70 years of the rightless reign of the right was not enough to bring together environmentalist Pierre Hurmic and LREM candidate Thomas Cazenave, who came in first and third positions respectively. In Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Grenoble, Paris, or Nantes, the union lists of the left will bring together socialists, communists, environmentalists, and sometimes even rebellious, systematically excluding the presidential party.
The trap of the right
As for allying with the right, it is this time internally that the question blocks. Witness the eruptive reactions to the sealed alliance in Lyon between Gérard Collomb and the Republicans, experienced as a betrayal and immediately sanctioned by the party leadership, who withdrew his investiture from the former minister and his foal Yann Cucherat .
In Paris, the hand extended by Rachida Dati to Agnès Buzyn was refused by the latter, said Stanislas Guérini, general delegate of En Marche, at Parisian. And the hand now extended by the mayor of the 7th arrondissement to macronist voters, to “Turn the page on Anne Hidalgo”, has all the appearances of a trap for the macronie, whose left wing already street in the stretchers in the National assembly, and where one is aware to pass for “A hidden right party”, in the words of a majority executive.
Confronted with the rejection of the left and its own refusal to anchor more to the right, La République en Marche must urgently redefine its identity. For the time being, the only clear instruction remains that of the “republican roadblock” facing the National Rally – which did not prevent, in Perpignan, a macronist running mate from joining the RN candidate. For the rest, Stanislas Guérini gives a single compass: “progressiveness”. A concept that leaves you wondering, especially in the post-Covid-19 world.
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