by Elizabeth Pineau and Tangi Salaün
PARIS (Reuters) – Negotiations ahead of the French legislative elections accelerated on Tuesday on both sides of the political spectrum, as a poll suggested that the La République en Marche (LaRem) party of freshly re-elected President Emmanuel Macron and his allies could retain an absolute majority in Parliament in June.
If the Council of Ministers has been postponed from Wednesday to Thursday, the presidential camp is not immune to speculation, in particular on the name of the personality who should succeed Jean Castex at the head of the government, and lead the campaign for the legislative elections. .
While the National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen and La France insoumise (LFI) of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which he missed by 1.2 points on the basis of the votes cast to reach the second round of the presidential election, employ to federate their camp, one of the keys to the recomposition of the political landscape is within the Republicans (LR), the historic party of the French right, more than ever threatened with implosion.
After the rout of its candidate Valérie Pécresse, who did not reach the threshold of 5% of the votes in the first round, LR gathered its strategic committee on Tuesday with the almost impossible task of giving itself a political line in the face of the sirens of the majority. presidential and those of the “union of rights” dear to Eric Zemmour, the former candidate of Reconquest!
“We are in reconstruction”, admitted the president of LR, Christian Jacob, leaving the meeting. “There is no double membership, there will never be,” he said.
Traditionally well established in the territories, still in the majority in the Senate and first opposition force in the National Assembly, the heir to the synthesis of Gaullism and Giscardism has everything to fear from the legislative elections to come.
According to a Harris Interactive poll for Challenges published on Monday, LR collects only 8% of voting intentions in the first round of the legislative elections, far behind the current presidential majority (24%), the RN (23%) and LFI (19%). ).
LR ON THE BRUSH OF IMPLOSION
According to the projections of this poll for the second round, LaRem and his allies would be able to obtain a comfortable absolute majority, with between 328 and 368 seats (out of 577), LR and his allies being reduced to the bare minimum ( 35 to 65 seats), behind the RN (75 to 105 seats) and a left bloc totaling between 50 and 100 seats.
“At LR, it’s the most total division,” laments a parliamentary source from the party, who sees the elected officials tearing themselves apart on the line to hold.
If Christian Jacob sees in the independence of LR the only credible alternative to the current power, some seem ready to seize the hand extended by Emmanuel Macron, like the president of the group in the Assembly, Damien Abad, while others lean towards the “union of the rights” with the RN and Reconquest!, like the “finalist” of the LR primary, Eric Ciotti.
In this context, the choice of the future head of government by Emmanuel Macron could deal the deathblow to the party of former presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy – himself having come very close to the current head of state, with which he spoke on Monday, according to his entourage.
“What I know is that if Macron puts in a right-wing Prime Minister, it will break up the party even more. They are completely lost,” says another parliamentary source LR.
Among the names that circulate the most in the corridors of the Assembly is precisely that of the former Minister of Ecology of Nicolas Sarkozy, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet.
“If some people want to work with (Emmanuel Macron), they have the right to do so, but there is a party for that: that they join him. The right has a simple choice: to propose a finally clear alternative, or to disappear “, summed up MEP François-Xavier Bellamy.
THE RN DOES NOT WANT “NO BARGAIN”
The fate reserved for LR is closely observed on both sides of the political spectrum.
First on the right, of course, where the RN aims this time to become the first opposition force, he who had failed to capitalize on Marine Le Pen’s second place in 2017, with less than ten of deputies.
On the strength of the progress of its candidate in the polls, where she won more than two million votes in five years, the RN rejected the first calls for the alliance of Reconquest!, while not giving up forming under its banner. the “union of rights” desired by Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen’s own niece, Marion Maréchal.
“I don’t want us to enter into a logic of bargaining between political parties because the French no longer want it,” said Louis Aliot, mayor of Perpignan and spokesperson for Marine Le Pen, on CNews on Tuesday.
“There will be RN candidates in all the constituencies of France, perhaps two-three exceptions but in any case at 97%”, he assured.
However, “we could support people who are not from the RN tomorrow. (…) We will see who asks and on a case-by-case basis, we will decide who we support”, added Louis Aliot, leaving an open door to the members of Reconquest! or LR who would like to line up behind the RN.
MÉLENCHON WANTS TO GATHER THE LEFT
Enough to elect, according to Louis Aliot, up to a hundred deputies from the nationalist camp, the RN rejecting the far-right label.
“(But) if it’s to do the shenanigans that Mr. Mélenchon and the Socialist Party are doing, I will be the first to say no,” he insisted.
The spade sent to the rebellious leader, who was delighted with the defeat of Marine Le Pen, is not insignificant when the two movements will once again compete for the vote of the working classes, exasperated by Emmanuel Macron and sensitive to their common promises on purchasing power or retirement age.
As in 2017, Jean-Luc Mélenchon presents himself as a natural leader of the left and dreams of being Prime Minister of a cohabitation imposed on the Head of State, whom 63% of French people do not want to see win the legislative elections, according to a poll. Opinionway for Cnews and Europe 1 published on Sunday.
Breaking with his strategy before the first round of the presidential election, when the candidate of the Popular Union called on the other left-wing candidates to step aside for his benefit without any other form of trial, the former socialist senator agreed to open negotiations with the other parties to form an alliance.
A legislative preparatory meeting is thus scheduled for Wednesday between LFI and the Socialist Party, we learned from the party of former President François Hollande, weakened as never after the humiliation of its presidential candidate, Anne Hidalgo. (1.75% of the vote), but which remains well established in certain constituencies.
Negotiations are also taking place with environmentalists, but if their former candidate Yannick Jadot said he was ready on Tuesday for a “coalition of left-wing parties” in the greater interest of the social and climate emergency, he specified that this would not be by lining up behind Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose program he considers too far removed from his values, in particular on the question of the European Union, because “it will not work”.
“If we want to win, we must respect the identities of all the members of this coalition,” he said on France Inter. “It is in the respect of identities, of diversities, that we will win.”
(Report by Elizabeth Pineau, with Myriam Rivet, written by Tangi Salaün, edited by Jean-Michel Bélot)