Twitter is going crazy: it is 8 p.m. on Thursday and President François Hollande has just started talking live on television from the Elysée. At Nanterre in the western suburbs of Paris the chatter has not yet breached the walls of the Agora citizens' centre. To be honest no one in the hall knows that the president of the Republic is broadcasting live to the nation.
The person speaking in the council-run hall is Mehdi Kemoune, a member of the CGT trade union at Air France and he is telling the audience about the episode in which a senior airline executive got his shirt ripped during protests and how some of the staff have now been convicted as a result of the incident. He attacks what he calls “this government which has tried to pass trade unionists off as hooligans”. This is a receptive audience in a communist town, and many of those present are workers, trade unionists, activists and volunteers in local associations.
Back at the Elysée Hollande has just said that under him the fight against discrimination had been “increased” but admitted making a mistake in trying to strip French nationality from dual nationals who commit acts of terrorism. But inside the Agora centre M'hamed Kaki, who has organised this evening, still has no idea of what is happening on the nation's TV screens. It was at the invitation of his cultural association Les Oranges that around 30 local residents have come this evening to discuss the presidential election next spring. The theme of the evening is : “Should one vote?” Each week M'hamed Kaki, a veteran of the 1983 march for equality and against racism - Marche pour l'égalité et contre le racisme – and a tireless campaigner for adult education in local areas, makes his way around the markets reminding people that they have just until December 31st to get onto the electoral register. Rarely at a loss for words he says: “With our actions on the ground we're partly replacing the parties who are no longer there. All those suits.”

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Back in 2012 François Hollande received 70% of the vote at Nanterre in the presidential election. Following successive local elections the popular vote has since deserted the government. Just before the meeting had begun M'hamed Kaki, a roofer and “self-taught” intellectual, who had studied the works of French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu, had delivered a harsh verdict on the current presidency when he met Mediapart in his mess of an office. “What's left of it? A feeling of humiliation,” he said. “The stripping of nationality. The right of foreigners to vote abandoned. They're buffoons who are heading for disaster. They've all squabbled. As for the Right, they're promising us social insecurity and to take away the little that we have.”
Back in the Elysée François Hollande has been talking for a few minutes and now finishes by saying: “I have decided not to be a candidate to renew my term of office.” It is a first for a French president under the Fifth Republic, which was created in 1958. In Nanterre the meeting continues but the news is now starting to spread. Ahmed Djamai is looking at the headlines on his phone. It's a little moment of history, live on his screen. But anyone expecting sadness would have been disappointed. “He didn't have much choice,” says Djamai, who runs a local association. “He shot himself in the foot. At times he and Valls at times had the [far-right] Front National's policies. They have broken the Left.” Ahmed Djamai says he no longer believes in the socialists. He hopes the more left-wing former minister Arnaud Montebourg will do well but is not sure if he will do so or not.
Behind Djamai is Catherine Kotto, a receptionist and “child of the Left”. She, too, unceremoniously dismisses Hollande. “It's the best decision. When you've failed you can't do better afterwards.” Valls? Why not, but she is not really sure. “It opens things up, we must be able to vote for someone who keeps their promises,” she says.
“Good riddance!” exclaims Saliha, a 58-year-old unemployed woman, who is angry that her housing benefit has been removed for an obscure reason. “I voted for the Left, I thought it was going to get better. The Left is about social issues. This presidency? It's rubbish. It didn't do anything.” She speaks of the abandoned housing estate where she lives, of drugs, of run-down schools that the authorities have barely begun to start to repair.
At the back of the hall another veteran of the 1983 march, Djamel Atallah, is fiddling with his phone. “Hollande has betrayed the people and working class areas. I had followed his campaign with interest. The massive vote for him in working class areas in 2012 had proved that at decisive moments the working class areas act.” He says he is still confident about the presidential election next year. “This great country is revolutionary. It has resilience,” he says.
Djamel Atallah says however that he hopes that the final choice in the second round of the election will not simply be between the “devil and the deep blue sea” - right-wing candidate François Fillon or far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen. He says he has not yet chosen who he will vote for. “Perhaps Montebourg or [radical left Jean-Luc] Mélenchon, because it has to be someone,” he says. But Djamel Atallah says he will definitely not vote for prime minister Manuel Valls who “is not acceptable in working class districts”. Nor would he back former economy minister Emmanuel Macron, who is making an independent bid for the presidency and who is a “little liberal who's somewhat in fashion”.
It is now 8.35 p.m. M'hamed Kaki decides to make a light-hearted announcement of the news to the audience. “In other news: François Hollande is not a candidate.” Those who were still unaware quickly check the news on their phones. There are murmurs, private conversations and two or three claps. Almost no reaction. The discussion immediately resumes about democracy, about conspiracy theories that scramble the brain, about “professional” politicians, the risk posed by the Front National and about those communist mayors in the Paris region who behave like little monarchs. In other words, back to serious things.
It is as if François Hollande's decision surprised no one. And as if, deep down, no one had been listening to the occupant of the Elysée for quite some time.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter