Legislative: jostled on his left, Macron invests in security

June 10, 2022

Three days before the first round of the legislative elections, Emmanuel Macron will continue the battle in the field of security on Thursday during a trip to the Tarn, hoping to still mark his difference against a dynamic left.

Faced with the withering of the polls for his current majority, Emmanuel Macron entered the track, multiplying the interventions and outings, as in Gaillac Thursday morning where he is expected by the national gendarmerie brigade.

After a visit the day before to Clichy-sous-Bois on the theme of sport, the Head of State “wants to show that he is not letting go of anything either on the far right or on the far left, whether on the youth plan or that of security”, argues an adviser.

In the Tarn, Mr. Macron must in particular return to the announcements made in Nice during the presidential campaign, including the creation and deployment of 200 new gendarmerie brigades throughout the territory as part of the future orientation law and program of the Ministry of the Interior (LOPMI).

“These new brigades, which will be fixed, relying on France services houses, or mobile, thanks to equipped vehicles”, explains the Elysée, “will offer residents public services such as filing a complaint or reception of victims and will strengthen the presence of law enforcement in peri-urban and rural areas”.

At midday, the Head of State must also meet some 500 inhabitants of the town of Puycelsi, and discuss “on the deployment of three of these new brigades in the department as well as on the actions carried out in in terms of local security, in particular intra-family violence, the fight against narcotics, and action for the benefit of winegrowers in the presence of elected officials, associations and actors in the wine world”.

But his camp also hopes from Mr. Macron a call for mobilization, seeing in the participation the “key” of the ballot, according to a minister who observed with attention the breakthrough of the united left under the banner of Nupes during the first round. elections for French people living abroad on Sunday.

A “sampling” which “prefigures” the scenario for Sunday, predicts the same minister, “with a settling” of the majority “compared to 2017”, before a 2nd round which promises to be “very battled” (sic), ” constituency by constituency”, “including where Jean-Luc Mélenchon scored high in the first round of the presidential election”.

The executive is focusing its fire on the leader of the Insoumis, like Mr. Macron who on Wednesday castigated Mr. Mélenchon’s recent harsh criticism of the police, and pinned the “draft bans and taxation” of the Nudes. “A project which would be harmful for our country”, insisted Wednesday evening on France 3 Elisabeth Borne, “and which in the end would impoverish the country”.

The Prime Minister also mocked the slogan of Mr. Mélenchon, who sees in these elections the possibility of climbing to Matignon. “We must be clear: it is not a dose of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and then the project of the majority”, she underlined, asking the French “a majority which allows us to vote the texts it is i.e. an absolute majority”.

In the response Wednesday evening during a meeting in Caen, on the land of Ms. Borne, Mr. Mélenchon quipped about “the panic on board” which seized the macronie. “Be afraid, Mélenchon is aggressive, he will eat your children,” he joked again.

Caught in the trap of the match between the executive and the left, the National Rally is trying to carve out a place for itself in the ballot.

Before going to a market in Agde (Hérault) on Thursday morning, Marine Le Pen was ironic in advance about Mr. Macron’s visit to the Tarn. “He can put his feet to the wall before the elections” but he has “zero credibility” on security, she argued.