The Béarnais deputy and unsuccessful presidential candidate Jean Lassalle announced Monday in Oloron-Sainte-Marie, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, that he would not stand for re-election in the next legislative elections. The deputy (Freedoms and Territories), elected to the National Assembly for 20 years, justified his decision during a press conference, by the “national situation”, castigating a presidential election “played in advance”.
Health problems and a criminal investigation
He also clarified that he was soon to undergo open-heart surgery, without indicating that this health imperative was the reason for his decision. Jean Lassalle also mentioned the criminal investigation opened by the Pau prosecution following the public staging of his abstention in the second round of the presidential election, in a polling station in his town of Lourdios-Ichère. “I will fight body and soul to defend my honor,” said the deputy, who will be 67 on Tuesday, referring to these lawsuits for “violations of the electoral code concerning attacks on the sincerity of the ballots”.
The votes of the town, of which he was mayor for 42 years, were canceled by the Constitutional Council. Jean Lassalle, who had won more than a million votes and 3.13% of the votes during the first round under the label of his Résistons! movement, had mimed in front of the ballot box in the second round the gesture of the vote before slipping his “white ballot” in his pocket, declaring himself “abstentionist before the ballot box”.
Julien Lassalle to take over his succession?
The deputy, who made known his “very strong emotion” to leave the hemicycle, indicated that he was in discussion with his brother Julien Lassalle, shepherd, so that the latter takes up the torch. Tall in stature, brushed hair and rolling “r’s”, Jean Lassalle was an atypical deputy, famous since his unprecedented hunger strike in 2006 in the room of the Four Columns of the National Assembly. For 39 days, from March 7 to April 14, he had led a highly publicized fight against the relocation of the Japanese factory Toyal in his canton of Accous.