Paris (AFP)

Ira? Will not go? Since the inauguration of Benjamin Griveaux to be the candidate of LREM municipal in Paris, Cédric Villani seems to be closer to a dissenting candidacy, at the risk of losing everything to the presidential majority.

After a summer of reflections, the MP for Essonne must announce his "intentions" on Wednesday, several media already announcing his candidacy, without the person dissenting.

By then, the mathematician, laureate of the prestigious Fields medal, must still "express himself in front of his family," says AFP his entourage. The time probably also respond to the outstretched hand of Gaspard Gantzer, independent candidate for mayor of Paris, and the letter of Benjamin Griveaux, in which the former spokesman of the government proposes to Mr. Villani of "co- pilot "the LREM campaign.

The case seemed settled on July 10 when, after weeks of psychodrama, the National Committee of nomination (CNI) decided in favor of Benjamin Griveaux to carry the flag of LREM in March 2020. But the sling carried by Mr. Villani did not calm down and the mathematician never gave the slightest sign of rallying.

What makes today say to a minister: "Let's recognize that we enter the month of September with the same problems as those of the month of July".

If he is a dissident candidate, "Will Villani escape a trial of disloyalty?" No, but will it hurt him? "No," he adds, although Villani is at risk of immediate exclusion. 'LREM if he decides to go there.

"Cedric is a mathematician, but he should be good calculator.The division is failure.The rally is the victory," warned Monday on Europe 1 the President of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand .

Risk of divisions, remarks moved by Mr. Griveaux with respect to his former competitors ... the beginning of campaign in Paris skates at en Marche. But the stakes are high: "Part of the victory of the municipal will be played in Paris" and "I do not see the President of the Republic leave Paris" to the opposition, says a cadre of the majority, which no "does not feel that Benjamin Griveaux makes his hole but that Villani does his".

- "Scattered Landscape" -

If it presents itself, "the candidacy of Cédric Villani would be an alternative and not dissenting candidacy" pleads Anne Lebreton, candidate for the nomination which had rallied the mathematician in the last straight line.

It does not prevent: in the other parties, one delights. "We could not have hoped for a more catastrophic departure of Benjamin Griveaux", welcomes a leader of the Socialist Party. "In September, he finds himself still trying to be invested by his party, as in July," adds the official.

And despite the support of former candidate Mounir Mahjoubi and Thursday of the mayor ex-LR of the ninth arrondissement, Delphine Bürkli.

In an attempt to clarify the situation, however, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe met successively in July Benjamin Griveaux, Cédric Villani and the candidate for center-right and deputy Agir, Pierre-Yves Bournazel.

"I'm not asked for anything, absolutely nothing," assures AFP Mr. Bournazel.

In the entourage of the mayor (PS) of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, it is nevertheless confessed that "a candidacy of Cédric Villani does not necessarily arrange". "Villani candidate diminishes the voices of Griveaux, but we also take," says a source at "Paris in common", a structure that brings together the relatives of the outgoing mayor Anne Hidalgo, whose candidacy must be formalized, according to several sources, in December.

Faced with a "landscape scattered with a multitude of candidates", the PS wants to "show throughout the fall that the gathering will be around Paris in common, Generations, communists or civil society."

It remains to be seen what the environmentalists, members of the outgoing majority but dredged for several days by both Gaspard Gantzer and Isabelle Saporta, and the teams of Cédric Villani will do.

© 2019 AFP