Putu phillip

Born in the prefecture of Seine-San Denis in the family of a postman, a political leader of the left and trade union activist. He received a secondary vocational education mechanic, but his first professions were a security guard and a handyman. He then became a machine tool builder at the Ford Motor plant in Blancfort near Bordeaux .

Already in high school, Putu was politicized and, according to his own recollections, adhered to anarchist views. Later he joined the Workers' Struggle left-radical party, which he left in 1997 during a party crisis, and joined another Trotskyist group, the Revolutionary Communist League (RKL).

Putu is secretary of the trade union cell of the General Confederation of Labor at Ford Motor in Aquitaine . The main success in this post was that in 2007 he played a leading role in the negotiations on the preservation of 2,000 jobs in the plant.

In 2007 he headed the list of the RKL in the elections to the National Assembly of France . RKL took part in the coalition with the “ Working Struggle ”, but the coalition received 3.41% and could not get a single mandate.

In June 2011, Putu was elected the 2012 French presidential candidate from the RKL’s successor, the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA), replacing its popular candidate Olivier . According to polls, Putu was one of the possible outsiders, and no more than tenths of 1% of voters were ready to cast votes on early polls. During the campaign, Putu's rating rose to 2% ^[1] . Among other things, they paid attention to his unformatted style and unusual advertising campaign (with commercials in the style of the film “The Artist ”).

According to the results of the first round, he received 411,182 votes, which is 1.15% of the votes. The party press explained this result by the fact that the extreme left-wing voters voted for the more famous Jean-Luc Melenchon . Putu said that in the second round, Francois Hollande will support against Nicolas Sarkozy ^[2] , but the NPA will be in the left opposition to the government. The election campaign of 2012 did not prevent him from participating in the strike movement at his enterprise.

Again represented the PPA in the presidential election of 2017 . He distinguished himself in the debates of all 11 presidential candidates thanks to his informal style of clothes, caustic attacks on right-wing representatives ( Marin Le Pen and Francois Fillon ) and the remark that they, along with another Trotskyite teacher, Natalie Arto , are the only ones with “normal work” (i.e. workers). As a result, he received 394,582 votes (1.09%) in the first round. After the elections, he continued to participate in protest mobilizations, including the movement of yellow vests .

• Information about Philip Putou on the website of the Special Project “Election of the President of France-2012”