Photographer Patrick Artinian is following the French presidential election campaign trail for Mediapart, with a series of photo and video reportages of the candidates, their supporters, meetings and the milestone events. The coverage will continue all the way to the final vote on May 6th.
This weekend Socialist Party candidate François Hollande held his final major meeting before polling begins in the first of the two-round elections on Sunday April 22nd, just as Nicolas Sarkozy held his own rally in central Paris. It was a media clash between the two main rivals, both eager to display their capability of mobilising supporters en masse.
While Sarkozy’s so-called “silent majority” jumped and clapped in blue, white and red at the Place de la Concorde, a demonstrably more black and white crowd, what Hollande calls his “popular majority”, cheered and danced to Caribbean music on the sprawling esplanade of the Château de Vincennes.
In a battle of crowd figures, both camps claimed to have attracted some 100,000 supporters, and while French police authorities refused to estimate the numbers at either event, Hollande appeared to have won the turnout competition, even if it appeared neither had topped six figures.
"Why continue what has failed?" he asked the crowd under grey clouds and a chilling wind, standing on a podium bedecked with his campaign slogan ‘Change is now’. "Why continue going in the wrong direction? We must turn the page. France is not bankrupt, it is its leaders who are bankrupt."
“To rouse fear is to have already begun a retreat,” he said of Sarkozy’s campaign. “Fear of the foreigner, fear of those who live on welfare benefits, fear of taxes, fear of disorder, fear of the markets,” he growled, adding, “and even fear of the Left.”
Among the Socialist Party figures who joined the event was Hollande’s former companion, Ségolène Royal, the party’s defeated candidate in 2007, who toured among supporters, smiling.
"I feel a great hope mounting from the depths of our country,” said Hollande. “A calm, firm, lucid hope of a change for the better." In a clear message to those who might abstain from voting next Sunday, when the first round will decide which only the two candidates who score the highest vote will emerge for the final playoff on May 6th, he implored: "I am making an appeal to you today. You must come out and vote. Give me the force to win the election on May 6th."
“Candidate for the socialists, I am also the only candidate of the Left who is in a position to win,” he proclaimed, citing François Mitterrand, the first socialist president of the Fifth Republic, his voice hoarse from the weeks of campaigning. “Do you want victory for France?” he asked the crowd. “Well, there will be victory on May 6th for France and the Republic. I’m telling you, nothing will stop us.”
Previous reports in the series:
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
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- Patrick Artinian is a Paris-based freelance photographer and a regular contributor to Mediapart, as well as French daily Le Monde, weekly magazine VSD and sports daily L’Equipe. He has previously covered major international events, including the 1989 Armenian earthquake disaster, the 1991 famine disaster in Sudan and the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, in 1993. A member of the Paris photo agency Contact Press Images since 1995, he is currently involved in an extensive photo documentary of contemporary US society. His website can be found here.
