LIVE - At a meeting at Le Bourget this Saturday, Jean-Luc Mélenchon wants to make a show of force

Édouard Philippe is holding a public meeting this Saturday morning in La Ciotat (Bouches-du-Rhône). He begins a “grand tour” with public meetings in all French regions “until the end of December”, and reaffirmed on Friday his refusal of the primary and of debating with his competitors, an “operation consisting of dividing the right and the center”.

“I am going to go to all the regions, and I am going to travel the country, organize meetings, public meetings with the French,” said the Horizons candidate for the presidential election during a trip to Bouches-du-Rhône.

On the left, the choice of the Bourget exhibition center as a meeting place is not insignificant. This is where the socialist candidate François Hollande held his famous meeting in January 2012, during which he said: “My real adversary (...) is the world of finance.”

It is also there - and this reference surely speaks more to Jean-Luc Mélenchon who despises François Hollande - that François Mitterrand held his last first round meeting during his campaign for re-election in 1988.

The former socialist president still remains a tutelary figure for the Insoumis candidate who was a member of the PS for more than 30 years.

After Clermont-Ferrand last month and before Le Havre next month, La France insoumise is returning this weekend to the Paris region, where it is most established, with this meeting at the Bourget exhibition center, in Seine-Saint-Denis. On Friday, 17,000 activists were registered for this event. Up to 20,000 people expected in total.

On Saturday, with this meeting, “we have three objectives: demonstrating the strength and dynamics of our campaign, showcasing our team and presenting our program,” explains LFI coordinator and campaign director, Manuel Bompard, to AFP.

Because this event follows the release in bookstores on Friday of the presidential program of the Insoumis, the new version of “The Future in Common”, with 1069 proposals.

And the radical left movement, always keen on technological innovations, intends to show in an original way what their applied program would look like.

“We will broadcast a short film, between fiction and reality, with passages between stage and screen, to show how L’Avenir en commune will change people’s lives,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s entourage told AFP.