For Marion Maréchal who supports Éric Zemmour, another campaign is beginning. The low score of the candidate, who obtained 7.05% in the first round of the presidential election this Sunday evening, disappointed the militants of the new party Reconquête!.
“No regrets but there is a disappointment”, confides Marion Maréchal at the microphone of Sonia Mabrouk. She still underlines some symbolic victories, “like the fact that the sanitary cordon is weakening”. “I think Éric Zemmour has something to do with it,” she adds.
“That’s just the beginning of the story”
The Reconquest party! of Éric Zemmour, which has 120,000 members according to Marion Maréchal, is for the former MP with a future. “That’s just the beginning of the story,” she enthuses. “There is a battle that has been fought, there will be a balance sheet that will be made with what has worked and what has less worked.”
For the sake of consistency, Marion Maréchal and her candidate Éric Zemmour will call for Marine Le Pen to vote for the second round against Emmanuel Macron. “What I hope now is that the core DNA of Reconquest!, which is to get electorates and right-wing executives to talk to each other, lives on, perhaps in partnership with Marine Le Pen if she wishes,” explains Marion Maréchal. “The ball is in his court.”
Support for Marine Le Pen by default?
The rallying of Marion Maréchal to Éric Zemmour had created astonishment since it was synonymous with political rupture and family estrangement. But now, logic pushes her to call to vote for her aunt.
“Obviously I would have preferred to call for a vote for Eric Zemmour in the second round, because there is still a singularity of line, of strategy. There are still differences on the economic level, on the European position and on the civilizational approach. But in the face of Emmanuel Macron there is no doubt to be had”, she explains.
Éric Zemmour, yesterday’s enemy, tomorrow’s ally?
“What I hope now is that the mistakes that were made in 2017 (…) will not be repeated. We will have to come together and not just in words”, adds Marion Maréchal.
For the former deputy, Éric Zemmour had said even before the first round that he was open to dialogue and alliances because “it is a question of doing five more years and for that you need a team, a government”. For this, she stresses the importance of the upcoming legislative elections, with a coalition in mind.