Choosing a new face, without knowing yet whether it will accompany rebirth or disintegration. This weekend, the 91,109 members of the Les Républicains (LR) party called to vote must elect their new president. As this second round approaches, the two candidates, the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes Eric Ciotti (42.73% of the votes in the first round) and the leader of the senators LR and senator of Vendée Bruno Retailleau (34.45 %), have multiplied public meetings, online meetings, elected forums, trips… Last moments to mobilize, and above all to reassure. Because for the Republican right, scattered and sounded by the 4.78% of Valérie Pécresse in the presidential election, a new division would be deadly.
In Le Figaro, Wednesday, the third man in the first round, Aurélien Pradié (22.29%), refused to give an instruction to vote. But he warned: “The most important thing is to come: to gather. The future president will be up to it if he succeeds in this first step”said the deputy for Lot, while putting pressure on several subjects: a fairer pension reform, or even ecology. “It will be the tightest election of the president in the history of the party since Nicolas Sarkozy, Laurent Wauquiez and Christian Jacob had been largely elected. There will be all the more an imperative to bring together without denying the differences”continues Antoine Vermorel-Marques, deputy of the Loire and support of Mr. Retailleau.
In this between-two-rounds, the finalists have promised to reserve a place of choice for Mr. Pradié and his supporters, but also for the loser on Sunday. Thursday evening, during a meeting in Paris, Mr. Ciotti replied to those who see him as too divisive a character: “All my life I gathered, at the National Assembly, in my department, by putting forward clear and strong ideas. » “We are polytraumatized from divisions, and I think that this gathering is the condition for our rebirth”said, for his part, Mr. Retailleau, Tuesday evening, during an online meeting.
Thursday at the end of the day, the atmosphere became a little heavier. After an article by Release on memberships “doubtful” in the department of his competitor, Bruno Retailleau sent a letter to the High Authority of LR, in which he considers that this element throws “once again the suspicion about the reliability of our internal voting system” and ask to study “any new measure that would strengthen the security (…) of our election”. A letter for the moment remained unanswered.
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