Lagging behind in the polls, the candidate of the Les Républicains (LR) party gathered this Sunday more than 7,000 people at the Zénith de Paris. A first big meeting in the capital for Valérie Pécresse who depicted what she calls her “New France “.
At the Zénith de Paris, the time was this Sunday at the rally. After a difficult week with several defections and polls that skate, Valérie Pécresse tried to give a second wind during her first major Parisian meeting.
All the major figures of the party were present, except the former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has still not supported the right-wing presidential candidate. Before going on stage, she kissed Rachida Dati who had crushed her campaign manager Patrick Stefanini on Thursday, and took care in her speech to pay tribute to Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Fillon.
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” We are here, together, to affirm, loud and clear, that New France is coming “Launched Valérie Pécresse, promising to wear” a new hope “in a France” reconciled “.
The more I travel through it (France), the more I embrace it, the more I embrace it, the more it amazes me, and the more I feel an impatience rising within me. That of seeing our nation rediscover the strength that belongs to winning nations. This strength, I have it in me […] All united, all in the lead, this is my France.
Valérie Pécresse, LR candidate, in a meeting at the Zénith in Paris
Farm on the Regalien
On a stylized background with blue-white-red colors and two tricolor flags, candidate LR unrolled the main lines of her program, interspersed with ” Valerie President », « we will winr” from his supporters, who contrasted with the solemn nature of his speech.
For more than an hour, she was very firm on the sovereign, while Éric Zemmour judged her “ no right “Saturday, vilifying the” overflowing immigration ” which creates ” non-France areas “. She promised to resort to a citizens’ initiative referendum and addressed all aspects of her program: “educational nation”, defense of nuclear power, 10% increase in wages. “ I want France in order, because I want the France of harmony “, she hammered.
” We are at the crossroads “but there is” no fatatity, neither to major replacement nor to major downgrading “said Valérie Pécresse, who has never mentioned the names of Éric Zemmour or Marine Le Pen. ” I defend French identity, the real one “, she insisted. In the audience, activists from the far-right collective Nemesis briefly unfurled a banner “ Don’t hide your face “, quickly seized by the service of order.
Tackles
For candidate LR, who was inaugurating a new blue and red logo there – a “Valérie Pécresse” encrusted on the V for victory – the challenge was also to tackle her rivals: Emmanuel Macron and the two far-right candidates with whom she is fighting for qualification in the second round according to opinion polls.
Quoting Jules Michelet and Charles Péguy, she defended wokism which is ” the opposite of the Republic “And tackled Emmanuel Macron who has” yielded to repentance ” and ” racialized the question of the suburbs “. The head of state ” will have to be accountable ” because “ if we do not react very strongly, a day will come when the French will no longer live together, but face to face “, she added.
A rather solemn speech that the candidate, criticized for being too technocratic, and sometimes appearing to be overplayed, wanted to humanize at the end, by telling her childhood of “ teacher’s daughter », her psychiatrist grandfather, and by thanking her husband Jérôme and her children, of whom she said to herself « so proud “. ” I am that indomitable French woman ” and “ nothing will stop me “, she assured.
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(With AFP)