Presidential 2022. In Nantes, Yannick Jadot insists that the “green vote is always effective”

The green presidential candidate Yannick Jadot hammered home this Thursday at a meeting in Nantes that the “green vote is always effective” and prepares for future victories, trying to dissuade left-wing voters from voting “useful” for Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

As the sun finally broke through, the MEP took the microphone with the green windscreen and climbed onto the small ring-shaped platform set up in the Naves, from which the famous mechanical elephant springs up, which makes families happy, the weekend.

Threatened by Mélenchon and the useful vote

His campaign remained nailed for months around 5 to 6% of voting intentions. But even worse: his score on Sunday is threatened by repeated calls from its competitor Insoumis to vote “effective” in his favor to eliminate Marine Le Pen in the first round.

In front of nearly a thousand people, Yannick Jadot therefore devoted a good part of his speech to diverting his voters from this temptation. And he also came back to it in conclusion: “The green vote is always effective, it transforms society, our cities, transport, housing, food”, he said.

Yannick Jadot also opposed the establishment and local work of environmentalists, who won town halls in municipal elections in 2020, to the results of the Insoumis: “The ballot is not once every five years to be done pleasure “.

On the merits, he also mocked Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his distrust of the European Union, without ever naming him: “Ecology in a single country does not work”. He who defends arms aid to Ukraineunlike the Insoumis, confided his “pride to be part of the green movement, never complacent with dictators, without ambiguity”.

“The strategy of seriousness did not work”

Just before speaking, Laurent Dubost, 65-year-old EELV departmental adviser, green flag rolled in hand, and Joël Garreau, former pollution risk manager in a 69-year-old community, confided their disappointments. Not against their candidate, “good speaker” in their eyes, but against this injunction to vote useful. “I have a friend who told me that he was finally going to vote Mélenchon,” grumbled Joël. “We don’t want a maximo leader after Jupiter,” tackled Laurent.

“We will not be in the second round when we had this hope at the start, but the campaign had a hard time taking it, the strategy of seriousness did not work”, regretted the first. As for Joel, he lamented that “people are interested in their immediate problems, but what good is purchasing power when we will all be overwhelmed” by climate change?

The submersion of the coasts by water was precisely the subject of the displacement of the candidate before the meeting. The first round on Sunday, “it’s not the polls that decide it”, then launched Yannick Jadot, promising a better electoral future in the coming years: “Whatever happens, we continue the fight”.

In the TGV on the outward journey, he was disillusioned: “The countryside was confiscated, with the Covid, the war in Ukraine, a president who refuses to debate. And railed against Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon: “populism has a good press, it’s easier to get simplistic answers”.

Call for a “burst of conscience”

His spokesperson Marine Tondelier defended the candidate against those who reproach him his lack of flashes : “Our mistakes to us ecologists count triple, he did not make any. It’s tightrope walking. There is no short sentence to stand out. He ran a campaign that was his style, and it was important to show that green people could campaign seriously,” after a colorful primary.

This serious tone, Yannick Jadot used it during his meeting, insisting on the climate emergency: “Sunday, I call for a surge of consciences, for general mobilization for the climate, for nature, for our children ” .