Former French Socialist president François Hollande said he is to stand again for Parliament in parliamentary elections on Saturday, June 15, in a political comeback that took even his allies on the left by surprise.
Hollande, France's president from 2012 to 2017, left office with record levels of unpopularity and is detested by some within the radical left while even the Socialist leadership regard him with suspicion. But he has had a relatively high media profile in the weeks leading up to President Emmanuel Macron's dramatic calling of snap elections to combat the rise of the far right.
Hollande said he will stand as an MP for the southwestern Corrèze department for the Nouvelle Front Populaire, a left-wing alliance for the elections including Socialists, the radical left, Greens and Communists. "I took this decision because I felt the situation was serious. [...] An exceptional situation calls for an exceptional decision," Hollande told reporters in the department's main town of Tulle, describing his comeback.
Hollande has already backed the new broad left-wing union saying that we "must all do everything to make sure the far right does not come to power in France."
While Hollande's entourage had already stated on Saturday morning that the former president would be a candidate under the banner of the Nouvelle Front Populaire, the announcement seems to have taken the Parti socialiste (PS) by surprise.
Officially, they reacted cooly to the move with the head of its election commission Pierre Jouvet simply saying that it "takes note" of the candidacy. But one senior party figure, asking not to be named, said they were "devastated" by the news while admitting: "We said we wanted the broadest possible left wing."
"I wasn't aware of it," said PS first secretary Olivier Faure in the afternoon, who was present at Paris demonstrations against the far right, while acknowledging Hollande's candidacy: "All those who adhere to (the) project and who are ready to defend together the colors of this Nouvelle Front Populaire are welcome, so I take note and I hope he will run an active campaign."
The elections, with a first round on June 30 and second on July 7, were called by Macron after the far right trounced his own centrist ruling party in this month's European elections.