After the announcement, the possible campaign of Christiane Taubira is preparing behind the scenes

Appointment was given Wednesday evening at the Place de l’Hotel-de-Ville in Paris, but also in Nantes, Bordeaux, Lyon and Marseille. The various groups of the citizen collective “Taubira for 2022” wanted to mark the occasion, a few days after the half-announcement of their champion’s candidacy, by organizing “flash mobs”. Alas, to bring out the voters of the left at 7 p.m., three days before Christmas and when the thermometer read 0 ° C in Paris, was perhaps ambitious. About twenty people gathered in Paris, not elsewhere. The Christmas miracle of the union of the left will not take place, it will be necessary to wait for the Epiphany. Christiane Taubira has indeed made an appointment “mid-January” to indicate whether this “envisaged” presidential candidacy is becoming more concrete.

But the former Minister of Justice does not remain inactive while waiting for this meeting. At the time of writing these lines, Christiane Taubira is already on three trips, which we dare not call “campaign” but which resemble it furiously. Saturday in Saint-Denis, where she tried to set the record straight after her unclear statements on vaccination; Monday in Vierzon, where she made proposals on the hospital; and Tuesday in Cergy, with the youth. All of a sudden, edited and dressed videos on social networks. Christiane Taubira now even has a TikTok account, where her successful Obama-style basketball hoop is already having an effect.

Basket or no basket? ????

Follow Christiane Taubira on TikTok: https: //t.co/MHhAFzwOdC pic.twitter.com/JrGWQxgIcf

– Taubira for 2022 (@ taubirapour2022) December 21, 2021

A citizen appeal unrelated to the putative candidate

“It is ahead of the subjects little treated elsewhere in the campaign”, judges Léanie, one of the spokespersons of the Taubira collective for 2022. This citizen collective, created in the spring of 2020, has already gathered more than 65,000 signatures favorable to the candidacy of the former minister. Their purple signs have been seen at many demonstrations since. But its spokespersons swear it to us: there is no formal link between the collective and Christiane Taubira or her relatives. “It’s not her initiative and we don’t have much of a relationship with her. Members of the collective were only able to meet her and talk to her in September. She then told us again that she would not be a candidate, ”says Léanie.

Discouraging? On the contrary. Because Christiane Taubira let it go. And then “the candidacy of Eric Zemmour mobilized us, and the initiative of the Popular Primary found echo with us. Moreover, Christiane Taubira was acclaimed during the sponsorship phase of candidates for the primary ”, recalls this spokesperson. We imagine that Friday’s video only strengthened their determination. However, there is no question for them to prepare to “campaign”: “We are a mobilizing force, we do not have the vocation to be his campaign team or his apparatus. We are just fed up with seeing this disunited left which does not want to discuss. “

Large and small maneuvers

The campaign is therefore being prepared elsewhere, behind the scenes. 20 Minutes was able to be confirmed that a meeting took place on Sunday morning, in the greatest discretion, at the initiative of Christiane Taubira. The putative candidate brought together personalities and elected officials from the left “to discuss her approach”, explains Guillaume Lacroix, the president of the Radical Left Party, who was involved. “There were a lot of people, it was very honorable in quantity and quality,” he describes. Including elected officials close to the PS, even Anne Hidalgo in recent years. For the boss of the PRG, of which Taubira was the presidential candidate in 2002, before stepping away from it, this is the right method: “It creates the conditions for a gathering through consultation work but also dialogue. with the French. “The elected representative of Ain quotes as such the declaration of intention of Friday,” in a video without intermediary, which has already been seen more than 2 million times “.

Discussions between parties, on the other hand, very little for her. Guillaume Lacroix, leader of an “old” formation and accustomed to long and bitter discussions of apparatus, wants to be of use precisely to that. “I interact with all my counterparts on the left very regularly. I explain the approach of the PRG and Christiane Taubira. But I am not the only one, I am not the point of reference for party discussions. “We actually find in the galaxy of supporters of Christiane Taubira profiles like that of the former PS deputy Christian Paul, who has given himself as a priesthood, for four years, to bring together and discuss the different families of the left, sometimes against all odds.

The program will come

There remains the basic question. At EELV or among the Insoumis, Christiane Taubira was quickly described as arriving almost with his hands in his pockets, without a program. Léanie, from the Taubira collective for 2022, sweeps away the criticisms: “She worries because she has her chances. ” A bit short. Guillaume Lacroix wants to be reassuring: “She wants to trace a programmatic path that takes into account each of the sensibilities of the left. She did not arrive with a tightly knit program to which we must rally! ”With, in the background, the idea that the Guyanese person embodies both“ the left of reality and the left of values ​​”.

The radical left also notes that Christiane Taubira voted “no” in the 2005 referendum on the draft European Constitution. A supporter of the “no” candidate of the non-communist left? It would be a first since this referendum which deeply divided the left. Perhaps something to seduce the left of the left?

But what about the left center, the left wing of the Macronist electorate or the very Europhile PRG of Guillaume Lacroix? “I advocate the gathering: if I want to do it with myself, I don’t need Christiane Taubira. I think it represents the point of balance of the left. And the left always has a point of equilibrium when it has won. This is to say if by mid-January everything will be weighed and underweighted.