Presidential 2022: on the right, the designation of the candidate for the test of a complicated calendar – archyde

The weather is almost scorching under the big top of the Medef summer school for the start of the 2016 academic year. On the campus of the prestigious HEC school, in Jouy-en-Josas (Yvelines), several candidates for the primary of the right speak: Nicolas Sarkozy, Alain Juppé, François Fillon, Bruno Le Maire… The interventions are detailed, deciphered, analyzed. Five years later, Valérie Pécresse, also eager to wear the colors of the right during the presidential election of 2022, went to the return of the bosses. But no speech, no remote confrontation with his opponents …

Unlike 2016, nothing is currently organized at Les Républicains (LR). The exhaustive list of candidates for a possible primary is not even known yet. The internal competition has not even been recorded yet, and therefore even less organized.

The opponents of this process, whom they accuse of all the evils, are affirmative: there is no more time to organize this vote. During the last presidential election, it took nearly eighteen months and many meetings to define the contours of the primary. From the conditions for voter participation to the location of polling stations, including televised debates, everything had been discussed.

Designated to work on the modalities of a potential tie-breaker process, the mayor of Antibes, Jean Leonetti, must return his copy at the end of September. The doctor’s mission was to discuss with each other, in particular non-LR personalities, such as Valérie Pécresse and Xavier Bertrand, in order to offer the best possible system.

A large opinion poll

Meeting in congress and, in the process, in national council, on September 25, LR could then rule on its proposals. But no one knows at this stage what questions will be asked of the activists. Because, to endorse any system, it will first be necessary to modify the statutes, which provide for a primary to the organization modeled on that of 2016. “Nobody wants too open a vote like 2016 or the divisions that followed the internal election”, remembers Annie Genevard, Deputy Vice-President of LR. Even today, many of them accuse left-wing voters who, according to them, “Undermine the vote”.

However, a consensus seems to be emerging: from Vendée senator Bruno Retailleau to the president of the Ile-de-France region, Valérie Pécresse, everyone wants a primary whose electorate would go beyond the members, considered too few in number. They are in fact around 65,000. “The last time, there were four million voters, there, at best, there would be 100,000 people, what legitimacy to draw from this vote? “, mocks a fierce opponent of the process.

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