American Paris-based photographer Thomas Haley is following the French presidential election campaign with a series of reportages published on Mediapart. On Friday he joined Socialist Party candidate François Hollande on his last day of campaigning before voting begins in the crucial first round on Sunday.
Hollande’s caravan swept through north-eastern France, beginning with the towns of Vitry-le-François (in the Marne département, or county) and Saint-Dizier (in the Haute-Marne département), the subject of the slideshow above. Not for the first time, Hollande was following in the steps of France’s first – and last - socialist president, François Mitterrand, who also ended his campaign tour in the same two towns before the 1981 election first round.
Hollande went on a handshaking walkabout in both, in and out of cafés and signing autographs. In Saint-Dizier he visited a council housing estate where a small crowd cheered “François for president!” to the beat of a tam-tam drum.
The campaign coach continued east to the Ardennes for a final meeting in the town of Charleville-Mézières, (see slideshow below), once a flourishing industrial centre now blighted by factory closures and high unemployment. In the last quarter of 2011, the French Ardennes département had an unemployment rate of 11.8%, compared to a national average of 9.4%. In previous elections, the region has given the far-right Front National party among its highest scores of any in France.
“If one is French, a proud citizen, a worker aware of his destiny, young with a keen will to defend freedom, you don’t vote for the Far Right, you vote for the Republic,” Holland told a crowd gathered on the town’s main square, La Place Ducal. It was there that, campaigning for the presidency in 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy gave a speech in which he first used the now infamous slogan “work more to earn more”.
“I have come to a region which placed its confidence in Nicolas Sarkozy, who even came to the Ardennes to give a speech about industry, employment [and] workers. Everyone can measure the extent of the disillusionment, the disappointment,” Hollande told the crowd, which Socilaist Party officials said numbered 4,000.
“There is an anger that must not go to the Far Right, which will give no hope and which will finally even complicate democratic life.”
If Hollande emerges as one of the two victorious candidates in Sunday’s first round vote, he will be back on the campaign trail for the second round on May 6th with meetings planned in Limoges, Paris and Toulouse. The latter is where François Mitterrand, once again, ended his own campaign for the second round before his election as president in 1981.
- For more campaign photo and video reportages, click on the links below:
French elections in images: hoarse Hollande targets first round turnout
French elections in images: Sarkozy's last stand, where the guillotine once stood
French elections in images: Hollande rides to the deprived suburbs to rally abstentionists
French elections in images: far-right candidate Le Pen hounded by an opposite 'front'
French elections in images: firebrand Mélenchon calls for 'civic insurrection'
French elections in images: Sarkozy rallies the faithful in Villepinte
French elections in images: Sarkozy's last stand, where the guillotine once stood
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- Thomas Haley was a photographer with the Sipa Presse agency from 1983 until its sale in 2011. Based in Paris for the past 35 years, he covered international conflicts and humanitarian crises before turning his focus on French political affairs beginning with the presidential elections in 1995. His blog on Mediapart, which includes a wide range of reportages on the current presidential elections, can be found here.