The contenders put themselves on the starting line. The boss of the deputies LR Laurent Wauquiez announced in turn, this Thursday, February 13, his candidacy for the head of the Republicans and tackled his rival Bruno Retailleau by saying that “France needs a full -time interior minister “, in an interview with Figaro. “The party needs everything except a war of chiefs and I did everything to avoid it,” said the group president in the National Assembly, whose entourage accused the Minister of the Interior of having taken the “heavy responsibility” of an internal conflict by launching his own candidacy at the head of the movement.
“I owe nothing to François Bayrou. So I have the freedom to bring the word of the right without being linked by government solidarity,” added the boss of the deputies to differentiate himself from his opponent, before a public meeting in Valence , on its lands in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, which takes the appearance of a first campaign meeting. At the end of an LR strategic council, which was held in the early morning at the party’s headquarters, Bruno Retailleau rejected the accusations of the entourage of the deputy of Haute-Loire who accuses him of not having respected a Agreement on the distribution of roles between the two men, one taking the side and the other entering the government.
“A coalition of the wide right”
“Voting is not to divide. Democracy was invented to avoid war, with rules,” defended the ex-Senator of Vendée at the end of the meeting, recalling that Laurent Wauquiez had too tried to enter the successive executives of Michel Barnier and François Bayrou. Promising to “do everything to help Bruno Retailleau to obtain results” in Beauvau if he takes the lead of the Republicans, while saying that they are convinced that “everyone is useful in their role”, Laurent Wauquiez assures that his “first responsibility as president “De LR” will be to bring together “.
The boss of the deputies also intends to go to “each of the LR federations” to meet members who will have to designate this spring the new boss of the right, the date to be fixed on Monday during a political bureau. He claims to believe in “a coalition of the broad right, capable of speaking as well of the people who have been lost in the direction of Eric Zemmour or the national rally, as of the voters who went to Emmanuel Macron”.
During the meeting of the strategic council this morning, the two candidates carefully avoided putting oil on the fire. Surrounded by heavy goods vehicles like Gérard Larcher, Valérie Pécresse or Michel Barnier, they nevertheless launched the battle around the calendar for the organization of the congress which will have to designate the new president of the Republicans. According to participants, two clans opposed a note of jurists who “advocate” a period of 90 days for the convocation of the congress and not that of 45 days which appears in the statutes.
Supporters of Bruno Retailleau are rather favorable to accelerate the process, while Laurent Wauquiez defends in Le Figaro that the 90 -day period is respected. It is ultimately the High Authority of the Party which must decide in the evening so that the electoral process is launched on Sunday, the day before the political bureau which must ratify the date of the congress, the sources explained.