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France’s already weakened center-right party is in turmoil after one of its leaders reached an agreement with President Emmanuel Macron’s rival party for next month’s regional elections, stressing the current mastery of national politics of Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
Renaud Muselier, president-elect of Les Républicains (LR) in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, was removed from the party ticket following the announcement of an electoral pact with the La République en Marche de Macron party for avoid the threat of a victory for Le Pen’s National Rally.
While the pact involved Macron’s LREM party withdrawing its separate challenge for the region and supporting Muselier as a candidate, LR leaders were furious at what some called a betrayal or “takeover” and they said it would be counterproductive in the struggle to keep the far right. from power.
“Immense sadness for this stab in the back” dit LR MP Eric Ciotti added that he knew they were “preparing their vile soup in the Elysee’s kitchen”.
Christian Jacob, LR leader, immediately announced that the current Muselier would not be a candidate for LR. “Fear of losing on the one hand and cynicism on the other have never produced a political agenda,” he said in a statement.
Unlike Macron’s centrist party, created just five years ago before his successful presidential candidacy in 2017, Gaullist LR has a long pedigree and is strong at the local and regional levels of French politics and therefore also in the Senate.
But at the national level, the party has fought since Macron’s victory in the presidential and legislative elections. In the 2019 European elections, the LR received less than 8.5% of the vote in France, even behind the Greens.
Along with the dizzying decline of the Socialists and Communists of the traditional left, which has left Macron and Le Pen as dominant players on the national stage and the latest opinion polls show that they are the two candidates likely to qualify. for the race. -in the presidential vote within a year. Both try to appeal to right-wing voters by emphasizing their dedication to law and order and the determination to repress Islamists.
Thierry Mariani, an LR defector who is now Le Pen’s southeastern RN candidate for the regional elections in late June, wasted no time in mocking his former party for compromising. “Little by little, the party is losing its way,” he told BFMTV.
Muselier’s controversial electoral pact with Macron’s party, announced by Prime Minister Jean Castex over the weekend, is unusual because it precedes the first round of elections. Normally, politicians only take these steps after the initial vote, with left and right often negotiating what is known as the “Republican front” to keep out Pen and the far right.
“Macron wants to show, a year before the presidential election, that an alliance between him and the right is inevitable,” right-wing newspaper Le Figaro said Monday in a front-page editorial.
“It’s a risky bet. The evening of June 27th [when regional election results are announced] if its pioneering candidate loses, the LR-LREM alliance, presented as a wall against the RN, will seem more like a step ”.
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