Co-president of French center-left party Place publique (PP) Raphael Glucksmann (C), speaks with journalists. (AFP photo)
Commentator-turned-politician Raphael Glucksmann was on Aug. 23 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.
Former essayist Glucksmann, 46, a European parliament deputy who leads the center-left party Place Publique, is expected to use a prime-time interview from 1800 GMT on TF1 television to declare he is standing.
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.
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.
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.
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 runoff.
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.
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.
The son of philosopher Andre Glucksmann, he served from 2009 to 2013, while still a young tousle-haired idealist, as advisor to the strongly pro-Western former president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili.
Now in jail in his home country, Saakashvili was a staunch foe of Russia after the 2008 war between the two nations.
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.
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.
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".
