It still has to be done. Bringing together a few hundred people in a bar for a meeting to present a candidacy for the internal vote of a party for the senatorial elections is not given to everyone. Alice Coffin, Paris councilor and feminist and lesbian activist, did so on April 3 at La Maison in the 10th arrondissement of Paris. Three weeks earlier, on March 8, she had declared herself a candidate for the nomination of EELV for one of the two or three Parisian seats in the Senate promised to EELV in September. The objective: to shake up the eco-friendly coconut tree and the Senate. “We must make visible what some have an interest in keeping hidden”, explains Alice Coffin, who puts senatorial elections, indirect and difficult to read, in this category. “Ecology is a way of exposing certain powers. »
On the program, we will not talk about the environment: “We are in an internal election at EELV, we do not need to convince them of the climate emergency, assures Alice Coffin. On the other hand, I really believe that we will achieve nothing if we do not change the institutions. So the Paris councilor insists on the role of elected officials, and what it would change that She or in the Senate. In a way, its media activist and program. Example in support, she returns to the Girard affair, which revealed it, or her role in the green primary with Sandrine Rousseau. “It’s important to have very strong words from elected officials because they influence the media story,” judge Coffin.
“We are not going up Cats »
It was a real “American-style” meeting that took place. Not a presidential convention of course, but it felt like a meeting before a caucus to nominate a candidate for a local legislature. “”We’re not going up Cats”, Yuri often tells me (his companion, editor’s note) but I think that we must always think big, even if it’s an internal ballot, ”believes the elected representative of Paris. And it seduces: a few hundred people “it’s good for an ecological meeting, judges a fellow traveler from EELV. But I’m not even sure that there are 50% of party members…”
We know the problem on the Coffin side, who is almost surprised when she meets one or an inserter. “It’s always the same with the current of Sandrine Rousseau: they won lots of supporters, lots of young people during the primary, but they did not bring them into the party. That’s why she hunkered down at the congress, ”analyzes a long-time activist. And then Alice Coffin left late in the campaign, when her competitors have been declared for months. “An internal election is a special exercise, explains David Belliard, transport assistant for Anne Hidalgo, who had won this vote to be the head of the EELV list for the municipal elections of 2020. It is an election where you have to go drink coffees with everyone. It is sometimes tiring for the candidates, but it is essential, it must be done. »
“We’re not trying to kill the neighbor!” »
In this race for the Senate, Alice Coffin only faces women since the ecologists designate men and women separately to respect parity. The main candidates are the deputy mayor of Paris Anne Souyris, and Antoinette Guhl, vice-president of the Métropole du Grand Paris. All of them are counselors from Paris. “Of course I am annoyed! smiles Coffin, who has made it a rule never to criticize a woman publicly. But the campaign is going well and his candidacy was well received among the elected ecologists of the City of Paris. “We are not trying to kill the neighbor,” reassures Anne Souyris.
The Health Assistant focuses her application on her chosen field. “We don’t have a policy of environmental health, community health and health democracy. We do what we can at the local level, sometimes bordering on civil disobedience, but after a while we come up against the national level. After a while, that means more deaths! “Antoinette Guhl, she does not want to put a subject forward, to better pose as a unifier and defender of “all the themes of ecology”. And for good reason, it is the candidate of the party leadership, and therefore favorite.
“She is the candidate of the establishment, accounting for it is she who must win”, warns a good connoisseur of the party who would almost yawn in the face of this candidacy and admits a “benevolence” with the candidacies of Anne Souyris and Alice Coffin , “more politically assertive”. For him, Alice Coffin has the merit of “bringing a little pep and stakes” to this election: “For an activist, when we are talking about a Senate post which is of relative importance, it is not bad to have a candidate who tells something! It shows something else about this encumbered election that are the senatorials. However, he does not believe in his victory. “I think she can count on fifty votes, but she needs at least a hundred more. »
“We are a little blind”
From Thursday, activists will vote all weekend… But their vote is only advisory. It’s like that most of the time at EELV because the rule is to respect the proportionality between the motions during the congress among candidates and invested candidates. “We are told the story of a party that is unlocking itself, which is opening up… But as usual it is the nomination committee that will have the last word”, laments a manager. “I have received lots of messages from activists who tell me, ‘frankly, your candidacy is great, that’s what we need, but I’m already involved in a motion’. I hear that a lot, and frankly it’s a bit hopeless, ”explained Alice Coffin at the microphone during her meeting.
“Frankly, if there is a place where there are always surprises, it is among the ecologists”, assures Anne Souyris. Especially since we expect 300 to 500 voters and voters big max. In this type of ballot, small movements of votes can upset the balance. “We are a bit blind,” admits David Belliard. However, in private, no one risks an iconoclastic prognosis. The coconut tree is solid.