Victor Chabert, edited by Ophélie Artaud
This Saturday, Les Républicains gather in Angers for their political comeback. One month before the party’s election, Éric Ciotti and Bruno Retailleau have declared themselves candidates, while Aurélien Pradié is still in suspense. But within the party, members want to avoid a war between two candidates.
The political returns continue. It is this Saturday the turn of the Republicans gathered in Angers on the initiative of young LRs, one month before the election of the future president of the party. Top start in a few hours from the LR youth campus which actually serves as the start of the Republicans’ school year. Because all the pundits of the party will be present, from Nadine Morano to François-Xavier Bellamy via Michel Barnier or David Lisnard. With really only one question in mind: who to take the lead of the Republicans?
Avoid “face-to-face”
After Eric Ciotti, it was Bruno Retailleau who declared himself a candidate on Friday. The very moderate secretary general of the party, Aurélien Pradié, should also announce his candidacy in a few days. All three will be present this weekend. In a statement to Le Figaro, Bruno Retailleau explained that he wants to be a candidate because he does not want a confrontation between the two opposing lines, Pradié, Ciotti. “This election must not turn into a face to face between two camps that would play one-upmanship in our state of weakness, a frontal clash could break us,” he said in the newspaper.
In the wake of the declaration of candidacy of the senator from Vendée, a forum was published Friday evening in support of Eric Ciotti, signed by more than 500 young people from the party. It is a war of nerves between two men who, basically, share the same political line of a strong right but whose form distances them. The 55,000 members will decide at the beginning of December. What a manager confided to Europe 1 is that this battle now had to be done intelligently. The specter of a new Copé-Fillon war still haunts Les Républicains.