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The breath of her victory in the primary has fallen, the candidate Les Républicains is struggling to revive. She and her staff are still betting on her “seriousness” and her meeting on February 13 to trigger a new dynamic.
Between the post office of Signy-l’Abbaye and the restaurant-bar Le Gigergeon, there are about 200 meters. It rarely takes more than two minutes to cross them, except to push the door of the church or a business in this large village in the Ardennes, 25 kilometers from Charleville-Mézières. Except, again, to be a candidate for the presidential election and anxious not to seem to flee the contact. To connect the two points, this Friday, it took Valérie Pécresse a good twenty minutes, several stages – a supermarket, a bakery, a café – and a few words with the inhabitants on her way.
A taxi driver recognizes her and stops. A butcher laughs, after his passage: “She and I, politically, we are not at the same table.” Everything remains a little agreed. Most admit they don’t mind the ballot. Ingratitude for the candidate’s work in January, in this funny political pot-au-noir where not much is progressing: for lack of wind, you have to take the oars out.
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