NOTAnother twist in the race for the Republican presidency. One of the favourites, Laurent Wauquiez, has announced that he will not stand to succeed Christian Jacob at the head of the party. “Today, after much thought, I decided not to be a candidate for the presidency of the Republicans”, announced the one whose Christian Jacob had made his favorite to succeed him.
“I make this choice because I believe that we must devote all our energy to this refoundation to which our country aspires,” he said in a message posted on Facebook. “Such a requirement does not support any dispersion”, he believes, before adding that “the solution will come from a break with what has become of politics”. While Xavier Bertrand and especially Valérie Pécresse emerged damaged from the presidential sequence with the low score of candidate LR in the first round of the election, the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region is therefore not part of the list of contenders for the party presidency.
LR must convene its congress in the fall to appoint the successor to Christian Jacob, who left the presidency of the party on 1er July after holding the position for three years. He was temporarily replaced by number two, Doubs MP Annie Genevard. Christian Jacob had made Laurent Wauquiez his favorite to succeed him. But the president of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes since 2016, who has made this region the laboratory of his national ambitions, seems to have another political agenda.
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“The subject is neither Emmanuel Macron nor Marine Le Pen”
“The alternative that we must build must go beyond questions of devices. I am convinced that this is the only path that will make it possible to meet the great democratic choice of 2027. It is, neither more nor less, than building a change of the same nature as that of 1958 “, announced Laurent Wauquiez, former minister of the Fillon governments, in his long text published on Facebook, with the false air of declaration of candidacy – early – at the Élysée. And to add: “The subject is neither Emmanuel Macron nor Marine Le Pen, the subject is the aftermath. »
His decision should pave the way for competition. The names of party secretary general Aurélien Pradié, deputy for Lot, former minister Rachida Dati, mayor of 7e district of Paris, or the mayor of Cannes David Lisnard, president of the Association of Mayors of France, circulated as potential contenders for the presidency of the Republicans.