The Béarnais deputy and unsuccessful presidential candidate Jean Lassalle announced Monday in Oloron-Sainte-Marie (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) that he would not stand for re-election in the next legislative elections. The deputy (Freedoms and Territories), elected to the National Assembly for 20 years, justified his decision during a press conference, by the “national situation”, castigating a presidential election “played in advance”. He also clarified that he was soon to undergo open-heart surgery, without indicating that this health imperative was the reason for his decision.
Mr. Lassalle also mentioned the criminal investigation opened by the Pau prosecution following the public staging of his abstention in the second round of the presidential election, in a polling station in his town of Lourdios-Ichère. “I will fight body and soul to defend my honor,” said the deputy, who will be 67 on Tuesday, referring to these lawsuits for “violations of the electoral code concerning attacks on the sincerity of the ballots”. The votes of the town, of which he was mayor for 42 years, were canceled by the Constitutional Council.
3.13% in the first round of the presidential election
Jean Lassalle, who had won more than a million votes and 3.13% of the votes in the first round under the label of his Résistons movement!, had mimed in front of the ballot box in the second round the gesture of the vote before slipping his “blank ballot” in his pocket, declaring himself “abstaining before the ballot box”. The deputy, who made known his “very strong emotion” to leave the hemicycle, indicated that he was in discussion with his brother Julien Lassalle, shepherd, so that the latter takes up the torch.
VIDEO. Presidential 2022: Jean Lassalle stages his abstention in his polling station
In a letter addressed to the President of the Constitutional Council Laurent Fabius, and published last Thursday on social networks, the elected official (Freedoms and Territories) had made his mea culpa. He had thus “ask forgiveness” from the inhabitants of his commune of Lourdios-Ichère, whose votes were canceled by the Constitutional Council.
Tall in stature, brush hair and rolling “r’s”, Jean Lassalle was an atypical MP, famous since his unprecedented hunger strike in 2006 in the Four Columns room of the National Assembly. For 39 days, from March 7 to April 14, he had led a highly publicized fight against the relocation of the Japanese factory Toyal in his canton of Accous.