Less than three months before the presidential election, Valérie Pécresse and Laurent Wauquiez displayed their unity on Friday in Haute-Loire.
Day of reunion and reconciliation for the former ministers of Nicolas Sarkozy. Valérie Pécresse and Laurent Wauquiez displayed their unity on Friday in Haute-Loire to “win together” the presidential election, and turn their backs on the past. “Welcoming him here is a symbol of my support and my total commitment alongside Valérie”, assured the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region after a visit to the health center in the small town of Dunières. “I will be totally committed alongside him in this campaign because it is the only thing that interests me”, he added, stressing that “the stake for us is the presidential election”.
“We will win together”
“We are going to win together, I am telling you,” launched Valérie Pécresse, welcoming “a great regional president”. Laurent Wauquiez will have “a pillar role” in his campaign at the head of the support committee for elected officials, she added in front of a swarm of cameras eager to immortalize these images of harmony.
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Laurent Wauquiez had already promised his commitment in an interview shortly after the investiture of Valérie Pécresse, in December. But this is the first time that the candidate, who had paid Laurent Wauquiez a private visit in early December, organized a public outing with him. Because if she undertook to visit each of her supporters – from Eric Ciotti at the beginning of December to Aurélien Pradié on Wednesday – the poster with Laurent Wauquiez took on a particular symbolism given the past tensions.
“It was a real hate”
In June 2019, Valérie Pécresse had left LR denouncing a party “padlocked from the inside, in its organization, but also in its ideas”. She had previously worried about a “shrinking” of the party then led by Laurent Wauquiez. “It was a real detestation”, remembers a support of the candidate, “she found that he embodied a radical right, too divisive”.
Friday, Laurent Wauquiez hammered it: Valérie Pécresse “made a very important start to the campaign which consisted in turning the pages of the past”. Often seen as the bearer of a liberal vision on the right, the founder of Libres! nevertheless heard in his campaign a very firm tone on the regalian, alongside Eric Ciotti. “Basically, it is exactly on the line of Laurent Wauquiez two years ago”, welcomes one in the entourage of the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.
If Laurent Wauquiez, who resigned from the head of LR in 2019, has given up running for president in 2022, he retains a special status in the party.
Three months before the presidential election, when the right finally has a chance to reach the second round, Laurent Wauquiez “also has an interest in showing that he wants to play collectively, when he has always been seen as a personal one. And he knows that after ten years in the opposition, if we lose again, the political family explodes, ”adds this support.
Eliane, the mother of Laurent Wauquiez present at the public meeting
For Valérie Pécresse, it is a question of gathering as widely as possible, before a day on Saturday devoted to the Centrists and the UDI. Beginning her visit to the health center on Friday, she outlined her proposals: “less paperwork and bureaucracy”, “liberalize the combination of employment and pensions”, send “4,000 young doctors” to under-resourced areas at the end of their studies…
Always accompanied by Laurent Wauquiez, she visited the cathedral of Puy-en-Velay. A handful of antivax was present at the entrance to the cathedral, the only trouble in this day of reunion, noted our journalist on the spot Bruno Jeudy. A public meeting was then held in the afternoon. Laurent Wauquiez’s mother, Eliane, former mayor of Chambon-sur-Lignon, even attended. “Even my mother came to support you when she does not attend all my meetings,” joked Laurent Wauquiez.
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