Commentator turned politician Raphael Glucksmann was on Sunday expected to announce his candidacy for France’s presidential election next year, entering a field that is crowded even just within his left-wing spectrum.<\/p>\n
Former essayist Glucksmann, 46, a European parliament deputy who leads the centre-left party Place Publique, is expected to use a prime time interview from 1800 GMT on TF1 television to declare he is standing.<\/p>\n
His move is expected to have the immediate consequence that his partner the journalist Lea Salame, a top news reader on rival public France 2 TV, will announce she is stepping aside to avoid any conflict of interest in the campaign.<\/p>\n
Far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen scents her best ever chance of winning the Elysee but a host of candidates in the centrist camp of President Emmanuel Macron, who is not allowed to serve another term, as well as the left have announced they will be contenders.<\/p>\n
Hard left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon is planning to stand while Greens leader Marine Tondelier is campaigning while pregnant and Socialist Party (PS) leader Olivier Faure and even possibly ex-president Francois Hollande are mulling runs.<\/p>\n
– Georgia connection –<\/p>\n
Polls give Glucksmann, who is popular among young people in what some term “Glucksmania”, 10-12 percent of the vote, a creditable score but likely not enough to make a second round run-off.<\/p>\n
To avoid too much dilution of the vote, the Socialists and Place Publique are planning to hold a primary in October to find a single candidate.<\/p>\n
While Glucksmann strikes a more reformist and centrist tone than the PS, it is in his interest to work with the venerable party and benefit from its campaign machine.<\/p>\n
The son of philosopher Andre Glucksmann, he served from 2009-2013, while still a young tousle-haired idealist, as advisor to the strongly pro-Western former president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili.<\/p>\n
Now in jail in his home country, Saakashvili was a staunch foe of Russia after the 2008 war between the two nations.<\/p>\n
As well as a champion of Europe who abhors the far-right, Glucksmann is a strong supporter of Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion.<\/p>\n
Beirut-born Salame, 46, had already acknowledged she would step aside from her job she has held since 2025 presenting the flagship news show if her partner stood for president.<\/p>\n
But she has insisted she remains objective. “I am an independent, honest journalist — a free woman,” she said in February, while acknowledging questions about their personal and professional situation were “legitimate”.<\/p>\n
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