The Republicans Congress: the grand oral of the candidates in front of the party – archyworldys

Exam day in a studious atmosphere. Ten days before the vote of the Les Républicains party congress, and on the eve of a third televised debate (on CNews and Europe 1, Sunday evening), the five candidates for the LR nomination, Michel Barnier, Xavier Bertrand, Valérie Pécresse , Philippe Juvin and Eric Ciotti, worked one after the other in front of the members of the national council (the parliament of the party), meeting Saturday, November 20 at the convention center of Issy-les-Moulineaux, in Hauts-de -Seine. A department “Very political” recalled one of the competitors, the emergency physician and mayor of La Garenne-Colombe, Philippe Juvin, and the chosen land of three former party figures, Charles Pasqua, Patrick Devedjian and Nicolas Sarkozy. The first two are deceased, the third is struggling in an interminable judicial soap opera: a strange omen for a party which fights for its survival, stuck between a protean far right and the macronie which siphons some of its executives and its voters for five years.

But five months before the ballot, the supporters of the “republican right” want to cling to the glorious hours of the past and still believe in them. “Peasants, we dig the furrow, and we go straight to victory”, affirmed the boss of the party, Christian Jacob, while the president of the national council, Annie Genevard, praised a rectified party, of which Emmanuel Macron would permanently steal the ideas.

“Serious”, “energy” and “rupture”

Launched in a blind race, while no reliable indicator makes it possible to measure their rating among the 150,000 members, the candidates alternately played their score – one hour each – in front of the 700 national advisers, showing little difference in position. background, more style. Presenting himself as a “Serious, very serious candidate”, former European Commissioner Michel Barnier has once again broken down his past functions, an honorum course from which he draws his legitimacy: elected from Savoy at 22 (“I beat a defrocked priest”, he curiously clarified), Minister, senior European official. “I remind you that I was a member of Robert Poujade’s cabinet”, even added the Dean of Candidates, who spoke in a soft, corseted voice, reading his notes.

Lashing out at the “Solitary, arrogant, sometimes contemptuous management” of Macron, he proposed another method, more “Collective” and rehabilitating the intermediate bodies, defending its three “Priorities” : “Restoration of order” (a “shock of authority”), the halt to immigration (reduction of family reunification, restoration of the double penalty, end of the AME), and the re-establishment of budgetary seriousness (fight against “fraud fiscal and social “and” bureaucratic delirium of standards “). ” For my part, I have never been one of those who found Laurent Wauquiez too far to the right “, He assured, while two of his rivals, Valérie Pécresse and Xavier Bertrand, left for a time the party of which he denounced the right-wing drift. The former boss of the party, forced to resign after the failure in the Europeans of 2019, was also applauded many times throughout this day, late revenge.

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