As anticipated for several weeks, Eric Ciotti will be “presidential candidate” of the Les Républicains (LR) party in December. MP for Alpes-Maritimes “working on building a rally team”he told Agence France-Presse, confirming an announcement made daily Nice morning.
Arrived second in the congress of the right for the presidential election, Mr. Ciotti had warned Sunday that he was ” Ready to take the challenge “ of the election to the presidency of the party, but that his decision was not “totally taken”. “Yes, I will be a candidate for the presidency of the Republicans”he said on Tuesday July 26, explaining that if he made this decision in two days, “It’s to speed up the schedule”. The former president of the Departmental Council of the Alpes-Maritimes specified in Nice morning that he is working on building a rally team “which will guarantee, tomorrow, the unity of our political family”.
Right-handed line
“To straighten out our countryhe added in the daily, there is only one way: that of reform. It is this path that I wanted to clear during the congress of the Republicans. The unexpected success I achieved in this election encourages me to go further”. The first round of the election for the Republican presidency will take place electronically from December 3 to December 4, if no candidate obtains the majority of the votes cast, a second round will be organized on December 10 and 11.
At this stage, the tenors of the party have not yet expressed a preference for the next president of the party, many are still recovering from the non-candidacy of Laurent Wauquiez. If Mr. Ciotti is seen as the favourite, some have reservations about his right-wing line and worry about a possible explosion of the party. He and those close to him refute these concerns with the Monde and believe that “everyone has their place. The Gaullist family is both Pasqua and Seguin, our strength is to add different people”.
Faced with Mr. Ciotti, the number two of the party, Aurélien Pradié, the MEP François-Xavier Bellamy or the former European Commissioner Michel Barnier have expressed their interest in the presidency of the Republicans. Annie Genevard, current interim president after the departure of Christian Jacob, also made it known that she did not rule out running for office.
Conversely, the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Laurent Wauquiez, like that of Hauts-de-France, Xavier Bertrand, gave up running for the post.