Photo: Miguel Medina, AFP
Article Source: “Le crépuscule de République solidaire”, Pauline de Saint Remy, Le Point(19/03/2012)
Villepin has sent an e-mail to his supporters in which he invites them “to determine the best way to be useful to France in the future.”
Now it’s official: Dominique de Villepin will not be a candidate for the presidential election. For his supporters, his absence from the starting line calls into question the validity of the sponsorship system. But, aside from the disappointment and this particular constitutional point, some of them are starting to question the way the fight has been led by the former Prime Minister and his circle. And the future of their movement, République Solidaire (RS), which Villepin left* to everybody’s surprise in October 2011, little more than a year after its creation, has also been brought into doubt. Here is the story of three days of disillusionment.
On Thursday, while about twenty voluntary activists keep on fighting at République solidaire HQ to get a few more sponsorships, as Libération informed us, (some will even take the train to come to Paris and bring one or two sponsorships by hand) Villepin announces his likely withdrawal from the presidential race live on the 8 o’clock news on France 2. "Unless there’s a republican miracle," he says, he will not get the sponsorships he needs. The ex-Prime Minister assures us he has been “prevented” from becoming a candidate. Fair enough, the activists will keep on hoping for a “miracle”, until Friday. The official deadline for the submission of signatures is 6pm, but some will keep on waiting for the ones coming from overseas territories, where it is still not 6 pm local time. But, around 7pm, their candidate extinguishes the last hopes by announcing his withdrawal in a communiqué.
“More sponsorships were lacking than was announced”
So, on Saturday, République solidaire members have a hangover. Some of them are even angry and think they have been used when far too many sponsorships were lacking to have any hope of reaching the 500 mark. “A lot more sponsorships were lacking than was announced on TV, and the staff were aware of that. They made us come in for nothing,” a very disappointed volunteer confides to us. On RTL radio that Tuesday Villepin had referred to 460 signatures. And yet, according to an internal source in RS, they had no more than 367 sponsorships 3 days later, including 12 which had been obtained on Friday. “On Thursday, at HQ, we had 175 sponsorships, and another 180 were at the Constitutional Council. Except we don’t know if some had been counted twice,” the source explains. When questioned about this subject, député Jean-Pierre Grand admits there were “fewer sponsorships than expected,” but explains that ”some disappeared, and promises were not met.”
On Saturday afternoon, Villepin sends an e-mail to his supporters. Besides the standard expressions of gratitude, the former Prime Minister brings up the future of RS. “The movement, as you all feel, retains all its raison d'être, which is to bring the nation back together, above and beyond political parties,” he begins, “but it will have to defend this vision. Let’s leave party politics to the parties. This is why it is now up to us to look beyond the next elections in order to determine the best way to be useful to France in the future.” That was all it took to start the rumour of a dissolution. For one of Villepin’s former supporters, the most likely scenario would be for RS to be “reduced to a club,” made up of the three people who now constitute the political executive: deputy leader Marc Bernier, treasurer Laurent Tessler and party leader Jean-Pierre Grand.
“How could Villepin jump ship?”
It is Bernier who is officially empowered to take such a decision. Interviewed on Monday morning by Le Point.fr, he refuses to comment on “rumours” that he finds deplorable. “We’re going to think about it. Give us some time,” he explains. On Monday afternoon, the député for Hérault nevertheless sent a call to party members. “Our movement’s principal vocation was to support Dominique de Villepin’s vision in this campaign,” he explained.
“We must now enter a period of change in order to draw all the conclusions from this situation. It is not the role of République solidaire to get involved in the partisan debates of this campaign. [...] Marc Bernier and I have decided to call a halt to the political activities of République solidaire during the presidential election campaign. We will take advantage of this time to reorganise our national and local organisation and to rebuild our financial resources, because we have not received any help from the State. Therefore, we call on our members who have not yet renewed their subscriptions for 2012 to do so and to make donations, because these funds will be essential if our activities are to continue.”
Failure
According to a member of RS, it is clear that the decision will be made by Villepin himself, even though he has given up the party leadership. A departure which, alongside the failure to get the necessary sponsorships, gives rise to further questions. In any case, a former activist sent an e-mail to the RS community in response to Villepin’s e-mail. “I’ve been disappointed for several months now,” he writes, “I didn’t understand and I still don’t understand how the founder of République solidaire could jump ship during this period. How can we attract new memberships and members when the leader quits? What are the reasons for this abdication?” It’s true that at the time his unexpected departure had made people think that Villepin had renounced his intention to run in the presidential election. His declaration of candidacy, two and a half months later, looked rather like hubris.
As for the rush for sponsorships, this sympathiser wonders about the way it was carried out, “I have been following Corinne Lepage’s campaign: she never stopped gathering her troops together to get the sponsorships. I haven’t seen anything like that with RS. We were not pushed, we did not receive text messages, Dominique de Villepin did not go on TV regularly to talk about his problems. Basically, I feel that people were left to their own devices to get these sponsorships. This feeling may be wrong. However, I do feel that we’ve been dealing with a Parisian autocracy which monopolised all the positions of responsibility, and that they’ve had trouble delegating.” He then wonders about the successive departures from the party and the validity of one of the key measures of Villepin’s programme, the “citizen income”, which he considers “ultra-populist” and “not in keeping with the original spirit” of the movement. He concludes, “I think we will have to examine the reasons for this failure and ask ourselves some difficult questions. And Monsieur de Villepin will have to provide some of his own.”
NOTES
* This might be slightly misleading. Villepin gave up the party leadership but it’s not clear that he actually resigned as a member. (Editor’s note.)
Translation: Jérémy Delhaye and Antoine Gervais
Editing: Sam Trainor