On the right, the pro-primaries put pressure on Bertrand to play it “collective” before 2022 – The HuffPost

Gonzalo Fuentes via Reuters

POLITICS – Those who talk about it the most, do the least? Scattered in La Baule, Brive or Levens, near Nice, the various candidates from right to the presidential election do theirs back to school this weekend, with “unity” as the watchword. All, although scattered here and there, promise to play it “collective”, in order to be able to win at the next spring.

“In the end, there will have to be a single candidate. I am no longer at Republicans but I feel deeply on the right and I will accept the rule ”, launched from the outset Valérie Pécresse, this Saturday, from Corrèze, in a message broadcast by duplex in La Baule where part of the Republicans organized a university of ‘summer.

The speech of the president of the Île-de-France region during the traditional return to school of her movement, Libres !, in Brive, where her supporters claimed 1,500 registered members, kicked off this return. Two days of pleadings and other round tables marked by a great absentee: Xavier Bertrand.

The club of four for a primary

The former minister, who started first in the race, who refuses to participate in any internal tie-breaker process at his camp, was not in La Baule to listen to his competitors plead for a primary, the only tool, according to them, which will enable the right to overcome divisions. “Not everyone is there”, but “everyone is not far”, remarked Michel Barnier on this subject when arriving at the summer universities, organized in Loire-Atlantique.

“I will not participate in any division,” he then promised the 500 or so militants gathered on this occasion. The former minister and Brexit negotiator, who explained, Thursday to Figaro, wanting to respect “the rules” that his family “will set to nominate his candidate” again insisted on the need to “constitute a formidable team of France to govern in stormy weather.”

Same speech on the side of the doctor and mayor Philippe Juvin, for whom the primary “serves to designate a champion”, or for Eric Ciotti, the surprise candidate. In a message sent to activists, in La Baule, the very right-handed deputy, who gathered his troops near Nice on Saturday evening, affirmed that he did not see this internal process “as a factor of dispersion, of division, but as a gathering element ”.

“This gathering (…) is important” to “participate in the recovery of France”, engaged “on the slope of decline”, also underlined the elected representative of the Alpes-Maritimes, in the wake of the three other candidates favorable to such a tie-break.

Bertrand’s shadow

There are now several questions left for this club of four. Of which the thorniest: what to do with Xavier Bertrand? Showing concord does not solve the case of the boss of Hauts-de-France, ahead in the polls, convinced that the presidential election is “a meeting between a man and the French”, and determined to go it alone until spring 2022.

“I do not see how Bertrand can avoid submitting to a primary”, said an elected to AFP, from Brive. Valérie Pécresse, strong of a recent survey according to which it is only three points behind its counterpart, evokes for its part an appointment “more and more inevitable”, in the columns of the Parisian.

For Philippe Juvin, the question will arise after the internal competition if the president of Hauts-de-France goes “to the end of his process”. This is why the doctor advocates a “political agreement.” “He doesn’t go to primary, it’s his choice, you have to respect him. But we can’t have two candidates in the first round. If I win the primary, I will make a political deal with him. In January, if he is ahead in the polls, we support him; if he is behind, it is he who supports us ”, he explained, Thursday, to HuffPost.

Especially since the right sees in 2022 a real opportunity to return to power that it has not exercised for ten years. “Our ideas and our solutions are acclaimed everywhere”, in the words of Valérie Pécresse. For the President of the Senate Gérard Larcher, speaking in Brive by video, the presidential election is “the meeting that we cannot miss” and “we will only be able to win together”. Messages received four out of five.