Christiane Taubira, the former justice minister and leading figure on the French Left, has said she is considering running for president in the spring and will announce a final decision next month, reports The Guardian.
In a video posted on social media she promised to “use all my strength” to unite the divided left. Taubira’s supporters had for months been calling on her to run to be France’s first Black female president to counter the rise of the far-right.
Taubira introduced same-sex marriage in 2013, in the face of street demonstrations and heated debates in parliament, when she served in as justice minister for the socialist government under François Hollande. She is also well-known for being the driving force behind the 2001 law recognising the slave trade as a crime against humanity.
Taubira, who was first elected to the National Assembly as an independent member of parliament in 1993, has been described by the professor of political science Rémi Lefebvre as “the moral conscience of the Left”. A recent poll by L’Obs magazine found she was the preferred candidate of voters on the Left – even before it was clear she might run. The same L’Obs poll found that 86% of leftwing sympathisers would like one single candidate to stand for a united Left.
Currently the French Left is divided into many different candidates and shown in current opinion polls as unable to reach the final run-off next April, which is forecast to feature Emmanuel Macron facing a candidate from either the Right or the far-right.