Lille (AFP)

Violette Spillebout, invested by LREM for the municipal elections in Lille, said on Wednesday that she did not consider herself "at all" as the "Macronist candidate", assuring that she did not want to be "the soldier of a president of the Republic. -powerful"

"I assume the logos of the parties that support me but now, by the end of the year, the logos will disappear" posters and leaflets and "I'll be the candidate + Breathe Lille +" and no longer LREM , she said during a meeting with reporters.

Invested by The Republic on the march in July after a bitter battle with MP Valerie Petit, Violette Spillebout has since received support from MoDem, UDI, UDE and the Radical Movement. The logos of all these parties are presently very small on his leaflets.

Asked if the qualifier "Macronist candidate" suited her, she replied: "No, it does not suit me at all! It bothers me compared to the political partners who joined me (...) I want to be a candidate who gathers much more widely ".

"We are not in a kind of personality cult (...) I am not the soldier of an all-powerful President of the Republic," Spillebout insisted.

"I voted Emmanuel Macron in the two rounds of the presidential election" of 2017, "there are many things that I support" in his policy but also "things where I keep my critical mind".

Regarding the government's proposals on immigration presented Wednesday, "overall, on the principle that guides the reform, I'm in phase" but "when we go into the details of the measures, we ask questions", a she let go.

On the pension reform, she considers "courageous to tackle now" but also "difficult for us" that the head of state "do during the municipal".

At his side, his new chief of staff, Ingrid Brulant, said that during the distribution of leaflets, she preferred to present Ms. Spillebout as "the candidate of the centers", the parties being, in his eyes, "a necessary evil".

Regarding the moment of the entry into the campaign of the mayor PS of Lille, Martine Aubry, of which she was for a long time the campaign director, Violette Spillebout said that it "changes nothing" for her that she formalizes her candidacy "today or in two months".

"For his campaign accounts, it would be nice" she is quickly a candidate, judge however Spillebout's spokesperson, Alexis Massart, who led the campaign of the UMP candidate for the municipal elections in Lille in 2008, Sébastien Huyghe.

© 2019 AFP