French Green mayors who haunt Macron's throne
The president of France is a political leader of the new generation. He likes to take care of his image and what is said about his management, more than the management itself. He has tried to reform some of the country's ancestral and outdated mechanisms, such as the pension system, but he has been resisted by the usual ruling class, the millions of privileged people who fight like cats on a string to avoid losing their advantages, which today are unbearable for any state, even a large one. In three years, Emmanuel Macron has seen his popularity plummet, going from being a president elected with great esteem for having broken the two-party system that has reigned for decades, to overwhelmingly losing a municipal election that would have had no greater chance if it had not been a serious warning to the country's maximum leader.
The recovery of the main party of the French left is apparent: the PSF that retains Paris with Anne Hidalgo, possible adversary of the president in 2022 elections, and achieves the mayorship of Lille with Martine Aubry imposing on the green wave that has shaken the French municipalities. They also won in Rennes, Nantes, Le Mans, Dijon, Nancy and Montpellier. But little else, because the real rising force is ecologists, the political option gaining most votes and reaping the first electoral returns from the world crisis of the coronavirus. Millions of French people have voted for the party they consider most capable of managing the earth, a refuge for human beings in the face of the danger of the virus. Now Macron is seeking environmentalism with a sudden defense of conservationism that, at worst, might not fool the citizens of a country that seems to have placed the head of state on the same shelf as traditional socialists and conservatives.
The main town halls in which the ecologists of Europe Écologie - Les Verts of the young Julien Bayou - have imposed themselves place to new names of the French politics that will have much to say from now on:
A 65-year-old lawyer, linked to the environmental and trade union movements and political activism since he was very young. In 1982 he joined the Greens. He will govern in a city where he has won almost half of the vote, 46.48%, and has overtaken outgoing mayor Nicolas Florian
For this French public health professional, the victory in the municipal elections of her city has a very special flavour because it means the return of the left to the city hall after twenty-five years of absence. She has won the support of the Socialists, La Francia Insumisa and the Communist Party, all of whom are part of the Printemps Marseillais coalition. He knows the port city well, where she was born 63 years ago, and in whose most depressed neighbourhoods she worked as a primary care physician.
His is one of the great victories of French environmentalism in this second round of municipal elections. He will lead the third city in the country after achieving 52.4% of the votes with which he is preparing to make an environmental reference management. He is a strong advocate of ecology and disagrees with anyone who opposes it to the economy, so we must expect a sustainable policy from the economic point of view as well. Doucet has been doing humanitarian work in Africa for years.
This 39-year-old environmental lawyer, born in Suresnes in 1980, has Armenian roots. Her family suffered from the Armenian genocide in Constantinople. Her political rise has been meteoric until she reached the mayor's office, where she has announced that she will fight relentlessly against all citizen behavior that harms the environment. She is obsessed with making plastic disappear.
The environmentalist formation has also achieved important victories in localities like Besançon, Poitiers, Grenoble or Tours, a green wave is not remembered in Europe as the one that France starred last Sunday. One wonders if this wave will spread to other countries. If we were to hold municipal elections in Spain now, would it be the same as in France?