The candidate Les Républicains reacts this Wednesday evening on BFM TV to the investigation of “Liberation” which reveals that the congress which designated her contender for the Elysée was tainted with fraudulent maneuvers.
Alone on stage. Guest of the political program Facing BFM, Valérie Pécresse responded this Wednesday evening to accusations of Release questioning the sincerity of the ballot organized by Les Républicains (LR) which nominated him as a presidential candidate in December. Pretending to downplay our investigation at the start of the interview – “Yes, I heard about it…” –, the president of the Ile-de-France region said to herself “indignant[ée]» from “level of this campaign” and denounced, like his party a few hours earlier, a “grotesque destabilization manipulation” while it shows a further decline in voting intentions.
Remaining on the line of defense chosen by his party, i.e. a “process” to vote “totally controlled”she assured to have respected the “rules” of this closed primary. “I wanted an open primary. I respected the rules of a closed primary. All the other candidates did. Even if it means excessively multiplying the number of membership cards, sometimes by bringing into the party, as our investigation shows, people with no interest in politics. And sometimes quite incapable of following the debates, because they are not French-speaking. Pécresse also tried to minimize our revelations, saying that the presence of a dog among LR members was “a hoax” : “It does not call into question the sincerity of the ballot”she insisted.
End slip
Another line of defense: if there had been cheating or “the slightest doubt”as Pécresse recalled, then its competitors would have “contested this election”. Difficult for them: the two rounds took place forty-eight hours apart and the appeal period was twenty-four hours after the second round. Especially since LR taught us during our investigation that the list of voters had been destroyed. Above all, none of the other candidates wanted to be the one to plunge his camp into crisis.
This Wednesday evening, apart from Senator Philippe Bas, president of the supervisory body for this primary, who got his brushes tangled up on Public Senate and BFM TV, no major LR figure had come up in defense for his candidate. Which then explained “the truth about this election” : “There are fewer people who were registered than people who were able to vote”. Ah yes ?