Senator LR Francis Szpiner leaves the Changer Paris group, of which Rachida Dati is a member, to create a new right-wing group at the Council of Paris, the Minister of Culture being, according to him, “no longer able to embody the gathering “, he announced Thursday in Le Figaro.
Rachida Dati candidate for the Paris municipal elections…
“In politics, you have to be responsible and have a little morality,” asserts the senator and advisor from Paris, saying he is creating this group “on the basis of loyalty to values.” Having accepted Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to join the Attal government in January, Rachida Dati “weakens her ability to unite the forces which will bring about the change expected by Parisians”, believes this lawyer, former mayor of the 16th arrondissement. After her surprise appointment, Rachida Dati quickly confirmed that she was a candidate for the Paris municipal elections, outlining the possibility of an alliance between the Macronist camp and LR.
But the damage was done for the president of the LR, Éric Ciotti, who announced that he was excluding him from the party. Nicolas Sarkozy’s former minister “decided to leave LR for a personal adventure which weakens us collectively”, tackles Francis Szpiner, accusing him of “campaigning against the LR candidate in the European elections” François-Xavier Bellamy.
His group, whose creation received the “full support of Éric Ciotti and Hervé Morin”, respectively presidents of the Republicans and the Centrists, has “at the moment around a dozen” of them, indicates Francis Szpiner. That is, almost a quarter of the 53 elected officials from the Changer Paris group, which was chaired by Rachida Dati until she joined the government.
And at the top of voting intentions in the first round
LR finds itself facing a dilemma: an Ipsos poll for La Tribune Dimanche gives Rachida Dati well ahead of voting intentions in the first round, whether she is without rival on the right or in the center (38%), facing Francis Szpiner ( 34%), or even to the latter and the former Horizons MP Pierre-Yves Bournazel (30%). Opposite, the PS mayor Anne Hidalgo or her first deputy Emmanuel Grégoire only received 13% to 16% of the votes. On Wednesday, Renaissance deputy Sylvain Maillard, at the head of his Parisian federation, opened the door for the presidential party to support a “natural candidate of our majority”.
For Francis Szpiner, “today, it is Renaissance that needs us in Paris and not the opposite”, because “the Republican right is anchored in all the districts”. The Macronist camp only has seven elected representatives on the Paris Council after the fiasco, in 2020, of the campaign started by Benjamin Griveaux and ended by Agnès Buzyn. On Thursday, the Changer Paris group quickly reacted in a press release: its new president Catherine Dumas regrets an “initiative which risks weakening the right in Paris” at a time when “Parisians are massively expressing their rejection of the disastrous policy undertaken by Anne Hidalgo”.
With “around forty advisors”, Changer Paris “remains the leading opposition force in Paris”, underlines the senator.