Presidential 2022: Valérie Pécresse in turn formalizes her candidacy

Published on : 07/23/2021 – 07:55

Freshly re-elected at the head of Île-de-France, Valérie Pécresse in her turn launches into the presidential race on the right, a way of not letting Xavier Bertrand occupy the field alone during the summer.

The former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy is running for the presidential election to “restore French pride”, she said Thursday July 22 in an interview with Le Figaro, then in the evening on live on TF1.

Defending a right “firm on the regal, secular but also ecological, liberal, pro-business, feminist and social”, Valérie Pécresse had distanced herself from LR in 2017 by creating the Free movement !, in opposition to the president of the party of the ‘time, Laurent Wauquiez, considered populist.

“I can not stand any more that we speak instead of acting”, affirms the ex-LR, eager to “break with ten years of bad choices, half-measures, indecisions, and ultimately the sagging of our country “.

The candidate for the Elysee, who has just turned 54, says she wants to “do rather than seek to please” after a five-year term “with very few reforms”, and wanting “to put the country in order”. She also announced her intention to travel the country during the summer.

“On security, on the order on justice on immigration, the ‘at the same time’, it does not work,” she said on TF1, presenting herself as “more reformist than Emmanuel Macron” and having “more authority than Marine Le Pen”.

Reelected in June at the head of Île-de-France, she is the second contender to formalize her candidacy on the right, after her Hauts-de-France counterpart Xavier Bertrand, also ex-LR, at the end of March.

“The primary is now obvious”

“No one will win the 2022 presidential election alone. We can only win with a united team,” warned in a tweet the president of LR Christian Jacob who had gathered, on Tuesday, Valérie Pécresse and four other putative presidential candidates.

All had agreed on a “single candidacy” of their camp for 2022, while Xavier Bertrand, absent from this meeting, refuses at this stage to participate in a primary. He intends to pose as a unifier of his political family, at the risk of a standoff with his former party.

The leader of LR senators, Bruno Retailleau, who had also applied for a right-wing primary, hailed Valérie Pécresse’s candidacy as a “sign of the vitality of the right”. “The primary is now a given,” he tweeted.

“The competition is always healthy, provided of course that in the end, there is only one candidate”, affirmed his counterpart in the Assembly Damien Abad, support of Xavier Bertrand, repeating not wanting to be “taken hostage by a double candidacy”. Damien Abad is reserved on the primary, synonymous for the leadership of the “losing machine” party.

“The hour of women has come”

Valérie Pécresse, for whom the primary is on the contrary the “only democratic solution”, affirms to Le Figaro that she is “not afraid” and “will do everything to win and bring together”. “I am vaccinated against the divisions of the right” which “made us suffer enough”, she said on TF1.

She had already promised to make “hear (her) voice” during the summer. “The hour of women has come”, she said in La Provence at the beginning of July.

Florence Portelli, vice-president of Île-de-France and support for the candidate, said on BFMTV that Valérie Pécresse was a candidate “whatever happens”. She insisted that a woman could become “the head of the country” and not just be prime minister.

Valérie Pécresse made her announcement just after launching a large part of her program at the head of the region on Wednesday. “All the promises we have made, we must put them in place very quickly”, she justified, accused by her opponents of “haste”.

His candidacy for the Elysee “is the most masterful demonstration” that “the region is for her only a stepping stone”, reacted to AFP Julien Bayou, national secretary of EELV, Ile-de-France councilor and unfortunate candidate in front of it to the regional ones.

“Valérie Pécresse and Xavier Bertrand, who respectively suppressed 12,500 police and gendarmes and 5,000 hospital beds, are running for the presidential election to come and contemplate the extent of the damage they have committed as ministers?” joked Jordan Bardella, RN number two and also an IÎe-de-France advisor.

With AFP