France’s former socialist prime minister Manuel Valls has put an end to weeks of speculation by declaring his support for the independent candidate Emmanuel Macron in next month’s presidential election, reports The Guardian.
The announcement sparked an outpouring of anger and fears that it spelled the final nail in the coffin of the now bitterly divided French Socialist Party (PS), whose candidate, Benoît Hamon, is set for a humiliating fifth place in the first round of the vote on 23 April.
During the party primaries in January, Valls had pledged to support whoever became the PS’s presidential candidate. His announcement that he would now not support Hamon after all was seen by critics as a betrayal and a new low in a scandal-hit election.
Arnaud Montebourg, another former socialist minister and primary candidate who immediately threw his support behind Hamon when the leftwinger became the nominee, was among the first to react to Valls’s defection.
In a virulent tweet, he wrote: “From now on everyone knows that an engagement made on one’s honour by a man like Manuel Valls is worth: nothing. And that’s what a man without honour is worth.”
Patrick Mennucci, a Socialist MP, wrote: “Manuel Valls you shame us.” Others contributed scathing responses accusing Valls of being “pathetic”, “a traitor”, and “a saboteur”.
Mathieu Hanotin, one of Hamon’s campaign directors, said Valls’s defection was “a pathetic attempt at sabotage”.
“I just want to say to Manuel Valls … it won’t work. The campaign isn’t finished. I always find it bizarre when political leaders shout about the wonderful things in our republic, about democracy, and all those great ideas and then, in the end, act only in their own interest,” Hanotin added.
He said Valls’s action was “the last appearance of a whole group of people, from the left and right, who want to continue to cling to power at whatever cost”.
Valls and Macron were both ministers in President François Hollande’s government from 2014. Macron quit last year to prepare a presidential bid under his own political banner, En Marche! (Onwards!).
Hamon was already reeling from the decision of the popular defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian to support Macron. On Wednesday, he told France 2 television: “I’m not surprised. This sort of soap opera is meant to weaken me. I’m running my campaign by talking about the French’s daily life, not Valls’s life.”
Other socialist party heavyweights have also defected to Macron, who is insisting his programme is neither right nor left or even centrist, but independent.