It was in the pipeline, it’s now official. Éric Ciotti is running for the presidency of the Republicans, the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes told AFP on Tuesday, confirming an announcement made to the daily Nice-Matin. Arrived second in the primary of the right for the presidential election, he had indicated Sunday that he was “ready to take up the challenge” of the election to the presidency of the party, but without his decision being “completely made”.
“Yes, I will be a candidate for the Republican presidency,” he said on Tuesday, explaining that if he made this decision in two days, “it was to speed up the timetable”. The former president of the Departmental Council of the Alpes-Maritimes specified in Nice-Matin that he is working on the constitution of a rallying team “which will guarantee, tomorrow, the unity of our political family”.
“To straighten out our country, he 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 obtained during this election encourages me to go further”.
First round on December 3
The first round of the LR presidential election will take place electronically from December 3 at 6:00 p.m. to December 4 at 6:00 p.m. and, if no candidate obtains a majority of the votes cast, a second round will be organized on December 10 and 11. december.
If no one has officially applied yet, the number 2 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 LR. Annie Genevard, current interim president after the departure of Christian Jacob, also indicated that she did not rule out running as a candidate. 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.
Éric Ciotti, 56, former first deputy mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi now rallied to LREM and ex-president of the Alpes-Maritimes departmental council, was elected on June 19 for a 4th term as deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes. According to him, LR must imperatively carry out its “ideological revolution” to hope to weigh between Macronism and the RN. “I believe in the need to assert a political line resolutely on the right, without confusion, without compromise”, he had detailed a few days ago. “More than ever, I am convinced that the ideas of the right – authority, identity and freedom – are the answers to the ills of our country”, underlined the elected representative of the Alpes-Maritimes.