The walker Alain Fontanel, beaten in the municipal elections by the Greens, and the number two of this party, invested by Nupes, Sandra Regol, are fighting over the 1st constituency of Bas-Rhin in Strasbourg, where they each play a part of their political future in the legislative elections.
On this territory which covers the city center of Strasbourg and extends from the opulent villas of the Parc de l’Orangerie to the district of republican reconquest of Hautepierre, Jean-Luc Mélenchon came out on top in the first round of the presidential election with 36.8 % voices.
“The third round effect is expected in the neighborhoods, there is a lot of hope”, is convinced Sandra Regol, deputy national secretary of the Greens, some leaflets of which now display the photo of the rebellious leader.
With the surprise conquest of the Alsatian capital by Jeanne Barseghian in 2020, the environmental staff had early spotted the place on the electoral map. Ms. Regol, who worked and campaigned in Alsace until 2012, was approached for the battle, even before the results of the presidential election.
“It’s been 10 years since I’ve seen her in the field”, proclaims Alain Fontanel, his main opponent in this election, the fiercest in Alsace with 17 candidates. The former socialist, walker of the first hour, who saw the town hall of Strasbourg escape him after a futile alliance with LR, saw this new campaign “serenely”, now calling himself a “challenger”. And he swears not to see this new ballot “as a revenge”.
“I carry the national balance sheet, she the local”, he analyzes, in this legislative without outgoing, where the LREM Thierry Michels does not represent himself.
In the countryside that day near the favorable avenue des Vosges, the former first deputy gives free rein to recriminations against the town hall of a resident who complains of the drop in the number of parking spaces.
“I am not the mayor’s ambassador”, replies Sandra Regol, who contests the parachute trials, recalling that she was involved in politics here “before En Marche existed” and that she was already the Greens candidate for the constituency in 2012.
Spokesperson for EELV before assisting Julien Bayou at the head of the movement, “I invested all my energy for the collective”, she explains to justify her distance. “Today I can weigh nationally and locally”.
Two scales that merge in this match, to which we must add the European level. Disobedience to community rules, fiercely debated during negotiations for the union of the left, resonates in a particular way in the Alsatian capital which houses the headquarters of the European Parliament.
“The treaties protect Strasbourg in its status as European capital, to disobey is to weaken it”, slice Alain Fontanel, while the regularly agitated question of a total relocation to Brussels of parliamentary sessions is a local political bogeyman.
“We don’t want Frexit, but a reorientation of Europe”, procrastinates Sandra Regol, who participated in the negotiations of the New Popular Ecological and Social Union, arguing that “the budgetary rules circumvented by Macron are derogations and in the end of disobedience”.
In this announced duel, which the former PS deputy Eric Elkouby (2016-2017) would like to question, the main issue is that of mobilization, particularly on the side of the popular districts of Hautepierre and Poteries for Mrs. Regol, where Jean-Luc Mélenchon achieved his best scores in April.
On paper, Nupes is in a favorable position. With the results of Yannick Jadot, Fabien Roussel and Anne Hidalgo, the total of leftist votes in the first round of the presidential election reached 46% in the constituency, Emmanuel Macron, doing better than his national average but still far behind, at 31%.
“We are not in Marseille here”, however tempers the Strasbourg political scientist Richard Kleinschmager, decoupling the national results from the local elections. This describes a city with traditions oscillating between “Christian democracy and socialism of the second left, Rocardian but not Melenchonist”.
03/06/2022 08:39:05 – Strasbourg (AFP) – © 2022 AFP
