Manuel Valls and Benoît Hamon, both ex-ministers, emerged on Sunday as first-round winners of the left’s presidential primaries. While Valls is described as a law-and-order strongman, Hamon is a moderniser who advocates a universal basic income.
Manuel Valls and Benoît Hamon, both ex-ministers, emerged on Sunday as first-round winners of the left’s presidential primaries. While Valls is described as a law-and-order strongman, Hamon is a moderniser who advocates a universal basic income.
On Sunday evening, partial results from France’s 7,500 polling stations showed that Hamon had scored just over 36.2 percent of the votes and Valls 31.1 percent. If the results are confirmed, the two Socialist Party members are set for a run-off on January 29.
Hamon, 49, is a relatively unknown political figure who has served as a junior minister – and briefly also as education minister – under sitting President François Hollande’s government. An admirer of US firebrand Bernie Sanders, Hamon stepped into the political spotlight again in August last year by becoming the first among his rivals to launch his presidential bid.
For long considered by media as a distant “third man” in the left-wing primaries, he appears to have received an eleventh-hour boost in popularity. In the run-up to the first round of the primaries, opinion polls suddenly predicted that he would secure a second place in Sunday’s vote, after Valls.
Spanish-born Valls, 54, has a wealth of political experience, having served as Hollande’s interior minister between 2012 and 2014 and as prime minister until December last year when he announced he would seek a ticket to the up-coming presidential election.
Valls, a staunch Hollande ally, is often described as a self-styled law-and-order strongman who used decrees to push through contested labour reforms during his two-and-a-half years as prime minister. He was also behind a failed proposal to strip dual-national terrorists of their French citizenship.
Valls is considered a divisive figure on the left and faces the delicate task of having to defend his record in the outgoing government while also promising something radically new.
Valls has an unusual background for a French politician. His family fled Franco’s dictatorship in Spain when he was a teenager and he only gained French citizenship at the age of 20. If elected president, he would be the first French leader who was not born French.
Heart or law and order?
Campaigning under the banner “Faire battre le coeur de la France” (Make France’s heart beat), Hamon has cast himself as a moderniser firmly rooted in the left, placing social and environmental issues at the heart of his platform. Hamon says the digital age calls for a new social model in which the shrinking workload is spread out more evenly across society, people get more leisure time, and companies who use robots to replace employees pay taxes on the wealth they create. And while critics say France’s 35-hour work week is too short, he wants to cut it further.
Central to Hamon’s programme is also the introduction of a universal basic income of around €750 a month, which would be paid to every single French citizen aged 18 and over, regardless of whether or not they are employed.
He has signalled that this should be progressively implemented, to be fully in place by 2022 and paid for with increased wealth taxes.
Hamon argues that it would boost growth and employment, while lowering poverty and cutting government red tape by replacing complex unemployment benefit schemes with a single pay-out to everyone.
He also openly supports the legalisation of cannabis.
Valls, meanwhile, is campaigning under the slogan “Une République forte, une France juste” (A strong Republic, a fair France).
Leaving the prime minister post only in December last year following Hollande’s announcement that he would not run for a second term, Valls has had considerably less time than his rivals to prepare for his presidential bid.
Seen by many as a centrist, Valls has promised to boost public spending, hike teachers’ pay and pump money into France’s cash-strapped universities. Many of his pledges contradict his record in office, however, including his plan to scrap the so-called 49-3, a notorious clause in the French constitution that allows governments to force through legislation without a vote – and which he repeatedly used while in office.
Valls has also pledged to lower taxes for middle-class households, to hike the minimum income and to boost both the country’s police and military.
Source: How ‘moderniser’ Hamon and ‘tough man’ Valls plan to win over France’s left – France 24
