Presidential 2022: for Laurent Wauquiez, “no candidate imposes himself on the right” – LCI

He didn’t name anyone, but his message was aimed at everyone. Laurent Wauquiez on Sunday issued a formal warning to the five candidates who declared themselves to the right for the presidential election, Valérie Pécresse, Xavier Bertrand, Eric Ciotti, Philippe Juvin and Michel Barnier.

The president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, who announced a few days ago that he was giving up competing for the supreme office, proposed, from Mont Mézenc (Haute-Loire) – his traditional place of pilgrimage – a uncompromising analysis of the current situation on the right, marked by “applications which multiply without knowing how to decide between them”.

“Today, it is clear that no candidate is imposed on the right, I regret it”, he judged. “No one can dispute it. No candidate has the strength to impose his candidacy as Nicolas Sarkozy or General de Gaulle did in their time.”

Laurent Wauquiez, who decided to give up the presidential election for “do not add division to division”, also allowed himself to criticize “solitary adventures” that pose a danger to “the chances of victory” – pointing without naming Xavier Bertrand, who refuses to participate in a primary -, and more generally those who “forget too often” that the presidential candidacy is “an immense responsibility that we take in front of the French”.

“You have to feel deep within yourself that you are in a position to bring together your political family and the French”, he added, calling on the contenders not to offer “the sad spectacle of divisions, the feeling that we would once again have the dumbest right in the world”.

Telling several of his favorite themes – fight against “assistantship” and the “finicky rules”, valuation of work, immigration -, the former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy however promised to engage in the campaign to come, launching “two calls, a call for union and a call for convictions”. “I don’t intend to retire to my tent”, he concluded.