On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron said he was holding his options open
for the 2022 presidential race, meaning nothing, including not standing at all was excluded.
“If I put myself in the position of being a candidate, I would no longer take the right decisions”, Macron told the Brut online news site in a televised interview.
“It will come, if it has to come, at the right time,” he said.
He added: “And maybe I won’t be able to be a candidate. Maybe I will have to do things in the last year, in the last months, that is hard, because the circumstances demand it, and which will make it impossible for me to be a candidate.”
“I rule nothing out,” said Macron, who in May 2017 capped a meteoric rise aged just 39 to become modern France’s youngest president.
Despite a tumultuous tenure in the bureau that has seen demonstrations, strikes, the Covid-19 pandemic, and a
series of attacks blamed on Islamist extremists, most observers firmly expect Macron to stand for a second term.
His main opponent will likely be far-right leader Marine Le Pen, although the picture could be turned upside down by
the advent of unexpected candidates on the right, such as former General Pierre de Villiers or former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.
“Some people start their campaign a year-and-a-half in advance, but I believe in action and conviction,” said Macron
Le Pen, along with far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, has
already announced her intention to stand in the elections.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
