Presidential election 2022: Bruno Retailleau announces that he will not be a candidate – archyde

He won’t go. Bruno Retailleau, the leader of the senators Les Républicains (LR), announced Friday, August 27 to Figaro her decision “Not to be a presidential candidate” from 2022. “I have never been obsessed with my personal destiny, it is the destiny of France that obsesses me. (…) My responsibility is to do everything to ensure that a right-wing candidate becomes the next President of the Republic. France in decline needs it ”, he explains.

“Today, applications are multiplying. I will not add to this dispersion ”, adds the elected representative of Vendée. For the moment, four candidates are declared for a primary of the right: Valerie Pécresse, president of the Ile-de-France region and former member of the Republicans; Philippe Juvin, LR mayor of La Garenne-Colombes; Eric Ciotti, LR deputy for Alpes-Maritimes; and Michel barnier, former European commissioner.

To these four candidacies is added that of Xavier Bertrand. But the president of the Hauts-de-France region decided to run while ignoring a primary.

“Lucidity is to recognize in all sincerity that I am not in the best position to beat Emmanuel Macron”, adds Mr. Retailleau, ensuring that “Wanting to exist at all costs, even at the cost of the collective, that is not my conception of politics”.

Favorable to a primary

Refusing, for the moment, to support one of the declared candidates, the Vendée senator militates in favor of a primary, the only way, according to him, to guarantee “The indispensable union” within his political family. “In a democracy, when there is no natural candidate, only the vote can be the justice of the peace”, says Mr. Retailleau. “My withdrawal is (…) as much a call to union as a call to reason: the right must give itself the means of a single candidacy, thanks to the primaries ”, he insists.

Asked about the candidacy of Xavier Bertrand who refuses any idea of ​​primary, the leader of senators LR affirms that he “Wish[t] still believe that he will reconsider his position. All the candidates have an interest in a frank and fair competition, including Xavier Bertrand: in politics, one never wins alone, nor besides that one does not govern alone ”.

The decision of Mr. Retailleau was immediately greeted by the deputy LR Julien Aubert, also classified on the right wing of the party, satisfied that “The all-ego is not as widespread as feared”. Corn “In terms of the quality and the plurality of the debate, the loss is severe, after the withdrawal of Laurent Wauquiez”, he wrote on Twitter.

Thursday afternoon, Laurent Wauquiez has also given up being a candidate. Noting that “The presidential candidatures on the right are multiplying in a worrying way”, the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region explained that he did not want “Add division to division”.

Mr. Retailleau, 60, had very early shown his interest in the presidential election, assuring in September 2019 that he could, ” why not “, to present oneself. But he never succeeded in filling his notoriety deficit. He had already given up being a candidate for the head of LR after the departure of Laurent Wauquiez, in 2019, for “Avoid a war of leaders”.