Eric Gaillard via Reuters
LES RÉPUBLICAINS – Oral catch-up for Valérie Pécresse who held this Friday, February 18 in Cannet (Alpes-Maritimes) her second major campaign meeting after the false start from Zenith of Paristo pugnaciously establish his project of “New France”, eclipsed by the controversies.
“I am a free and indomitable woman, I will be serene in the storm, I will stay the course until the Élysée”, launched presidential candidate LR to the applause of 2,000 spectators.
This regional meeting was eagerly awaited after that of Sunday in Paris, considered “failed” by many.
“She wanted to give emphasis, it doesn’t suit her at all! She must remain herself”, affirmed in the afternoon a voter of François Fillon in 2017, crossed in Cannes.
In this LR bastion, the staging was more classic: young LRs seated on stage, several regional tenors intervening before her, two French and European flags in the background…
Above all, Valérie Pécresse spoke without notes, pacing the podium and interpellating her speech of almost an hour with questions to the public, far from the frozen attitude at the desk which had left a calamitous image at the Zenith.
“Friends, are you ready to weather the storms with me? Are you ready for victory? I am, so follow me!” she launched to the room, arousing massive “yes”.
A change of tone which the spectators welcomed: “she was impeccable”, assured after the meeting Geneviève, 75 years old. “She has improved a lot, we feel that she is more comfortable, she was much more convincing than at the Zenith,” said Valérie, 47.
In this speech, the candidate losing ground in the polls pounded the macronie, deploring to be “the target of all the attacks since January”. “It’s the ball of the hypocrites” with “a totally unhealthy game of LREM to raise the extremes” and ensure the re-election of Emmanuel Macron, she launched.
“Mr. Macron is going to present his candidacy, he had better apologize”, she launched before vilifying the results of a “zigzag president”: “migratory Berezina”, “school out of breath”, justice “drowned and abandoned” … “Five years was too much, ten years will be too late”, she snapped.
A firm speech on immigration in the stronghold of Éric Ciotti
By contrast, she defended her “New France” project for the post-Covid period, where “we will have to repair everything, rebuild everything”.
“I want to make my project known, I don’t want it to be distorted, to be reduced to just one of its parts, it’s a real project of alternation for Emmanuel Macron”, she had assured in the afternoon during a press point, assuring: “I trace my route”.
Describing herself as “the payroll candidate”, she lamented in her speech that retirees are the “sacrifices” of Macron’s five-year term and promised to restore the universality of family allowances.
“We are going to debureaucratize everything, simplify everything” in health, she assured before triggering applause with her firm speech on immigration, in the stronghold department ofEric Ciotti: end of the right of the soil and automatic family reunification, asylum at the borders…
No allusion in this speech to the “great replacement” which had created a controversy after the Zéniththe candidate assuring: “whatever her origin, her skin color, her identity, I will be the president of national reconciliation, of all French people”.
Valérie Pécresse, however, left the sovereign to develop other axes of her project, in particular on the “educational nation” and the “return to fundamentals” at school that she promises, and on “an ecology which is not a punishment”.
Sometimes accused of not caring enough for Nicolas Sarkozy who, for the time being, has not given him official support, she paid strong tribute to the former head of state from whom she “learned a lot”.
As “faithful heiress of General De Gaulle”, she also promised to “rehabilitate the referendum”, in particular on immigration and security, and to relaunch the popular initiative referendum.
See also on The HuffPost: “Great replacement”, at her meeting, Valérie Pécresse is not her first time