Former minister Taubira plans to run for French presidency

Christiane Taubira is 2nd Black French woman to declare bid for highest public office

Christiane Taubira, a left-wing politician and former justice minister, on Friday announced plans to contest the 2022 election for the French presidency.

In a short video released on social media, Taubira revealed her plans, saying she will put all her strength and not be “just another candidate.”

Formal announcement of her candidacy will be made in mid-January, she added.

Taubira is the second Black French woman to declare a bid for the country’s highest public office.

The announcement, coming just four months before the first round of voting in April next year, took many prospective candidates and political parties by surprise, though.

Her name will be one more addition to the crowded left-wing list who are vying for the presidency and planning to run separate campaigns. These include socialist candidate and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, Greens–European Free Alliance’s Yannick Jadot, La France Insoumise’s Jean-Luc Melenchon, and the Communist party’s Fabien Roussel.

Speaking to France Bleu news, Jadot dismissed Taubira’s unconfirmed candidacy. “She plans to be a candidate, after five years of political retirement, with a three-minute video… for my part I did not ‘consider’ being a candidate, I ‘am’ a candidate for the presidential election.”

Hidalgo, who has been calling for the left-wing to choose one candidate, said the “best way to decide between candidates is to conduct an open primary through a televised debate.”

Eric Coquerel, deputy leader of the France Insoumise party, criticized Taubira’s move as not serious on BFMTV news. “We must stop, we are not in a playground. Even the election of school delegates is more serious…”

Rival right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen of the National Rally party reacted to the “plan” as a “funny idea”.

Taubira was a law minister in President Francois Hollande’s Cabinet and a member of the European Parliament. Her political career is defined by her work against slavery, particularly for drafting a 2001 law that recognizes Atlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity and for demanding land compensation for the descendants of slaves in the French overseas territories.

Before her, Senegalese-born Rama Yade, a moderate conservative who served in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Cabinet, had run for the election.