Campaigning for the 2022 presidential election, Valérie Pécresse seems to be following in the footsteps of her mentor Jacques Chirac. By confiding in her debut in politics in the book “And that’s what changed everything”, the candidate LR revealed a surprising anecdote about the former President of the Republic.
By taking part in the 2022 presidential election, Will Valérie Pécresse follow in the footsteps of Jacques Chirac? Before coming to the president of the Île-de-France region and being elected LR candidate for the race at the Élysée, She began her political career alongside former President of the Republic. After having been one of its project managers in 1997, Valérie Pécresse moved on to the position of Technical Advisor until 2002. Roles which enabled her to have a certain closeness with Jacques Chirac, as she recounts in the book “And that’s what changed everything”, published in 2019, by Robert Laffont. “In any case, Chirac was with me like Kohl with Merkel: very attentive, almost paternalistic“.
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And her appointment as deputy in the second constituency of Yvelines in 2002, indeed confirmed it. Hearing of the investiture of his protegee, Jacques Chirac invites her to his office to congratulate her of this great political victory. When she just shook her hand, Valérie Pécresse was surprised by the astonishing request of the former head of state. “Chirac then said to me: ‘Kiss Me’. I’m very embarrassed”, she remembers. If she hands him “a shy cheek”, the wife of Jérôme Pécresse is then struck by the reaction of the latter. “‘You don’t know how to kiss! We kiss with the whole body, like that!’ And he gives me a vigorous hug, à la Chirac”, says the 54-year-old politician. Through this lively demonstration, Bernadette Chirac’s husband wanted to provide advice to Valérie Pécresse. “He adds, ‘You’re going to do grassroots politics. People are going to want to kiss, and take advantage of that: it will save your hand“, she thus entrusted to the journalist and writer Marion Van Renterghem. In the middle of the presidential campaign, this warning must certainly be very precious for the one who is closely following Emmanuel Macron.
Valérie Pécresse: a real “Chiraquian”
When she had just been elected to represent the right in the 2022 presidential election, Valérie Pécresse decided to perform his first official trip to the town of Usuel, in Corrèze. A choice that was far from trivial for the mother. Indeed, it is the city in which his “mentor” Jacques Chirac was a deputy. “There is no storytelling, Corrèze is part of its identity”, confided Frédéric Soulier, mayor of Brive, to our colleagues from the Parisian about Valérie Pécresse. By regularly quoting Jacques Chirac in his speeches, the former budget minister shows that her convictions are not far from those of the former President of the Republic.
And his last outing to Argenteuil confirmed Valérie Pécresse’s admiration for his mentor. Just twenty years ago, Jacques Chirac went to this same city to defend his electoral program. A detail that did not escape Georges Mothron, mayor of the city, who then confided in the Parisian : “He was re-elected two months later. So inch Allah, as we say in Argenteuil”. Will these similarities bring luck to Valérie Pécresse? Answer in the first round, Sunday, April 10, 2022.
Photo credits: Bruno Bebert / Bestimage