Losing in polls, Macron TV special shows new humble side
Ramin Mazaheri
Press TV, Paris
France’s election race has just gotten quite a bit tighter. A recent poll shows that the mainstream conservative party’s new candidate will defeat Emmanuel Macron. The incumbent president immediately went into damage control mode with a rare media interview.
French President Emmanuel Macron didn’t give a press conference until more than two years into his presidency, but he gave a two hour televised interview shortly after the publication of the first poll which shows him losing in the second round in the April election.
The primary of the mainstream conservative party recently selected Valerie Pecresse, a former budget minister under Nicolas Sarkozy, and a new poll has her beating Macron 52-48 in the second round.
In 2017 the conservative candidate, Francois Fillion was disgraced by a tremendous scandal over “fake jobs” and yet he still almost made the second round. Many say the poll is a reminder of the historic strength of the mainstream conservative party, and also of Emmanuel Macron’s almost permanently low approval ratings.
Pecresse hasn’t come out of nowhere but few expected that she would be in this position. She was considered the conservative who is the most similar to Macron, so a Pecresse-Macron final round wouldn’t offer many arguments in terms of policy.
In the interview Macron rejected his nickname, “president of the rich”, but also promised that his re-election will bring right-wing changes to pensions - that could cost him with older voters.
He repeatedly admitted that he has made mistakes in his comportment, but not his policy, and claimed that the corona pandemic made him more “sensitive” to the needs of the average person. Many said the interview appeared like a campaign speech, but Macron has still not yet declared if he is running for re-election.
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