Paris (AFP)
Promotion of a young guard, anchoring in the territories, elected officials and the return of François Baroin, potential candidate for the presidency: Christian Jacob presented Wednesday the new leadership of the Republicans with the ambition "to embody the alternation" .
"Our desire is to meet the expectations of the French (...) to see us at work in a spirit of gathering, reconciliation with a clear goal: embody the alternation", explained to the press the new boss from LR.
"For that, it will be necessary to speak to the French of all the subjects, not to seek the zone of comfort of our subjects of predilection", added the former president of the group LR of the Assembly without minimizing the difficulty of its task.
The party of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy has known for years a descent into hell, shaken by electoral failures, court cases, internal rivalries and an uncertain line in a political landscape recomposed.
But who in the party to embody this alternation? Christian Jacob having announced that he would not run for president, the presence at his side of former Chirac minister François Baroin has revived speculation.
The president of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF), retired from partisan politics for two years, has reinstated the organization chart of the party where he will sit on the strategic committee, the political bureau and the national commission of investiture , three strategic instances.
"It was important for me that François is on the team," explained Christian Jacob, evading the question of the future candidate LR in the presidential election. "Today we put the rails, then we will take care of putting a locomotive," he said.
"I come to help Christian, help a team that has a lot of talent.The first time is the rally.It is a new stage that is built," sobered the mayor of Troyes.
The other potential candidates on the right at the Elysee Palace, Xavier Bertrand and Valérie Pécresse "know that the doors are open" in the party they have chosen to leave after 2017, explained Christian Jacob. "I do not doubt that a certain number of friends who have gone away will be able to come back, if we succeed in municipal elections, the substantive work," he added.
"Local anchorage"
Faced with the arduous task of rebuilding a diseased party, the new boss of the LR has joined the deputy of Loir-et-Cher Guillaume Peltier, who had renounced to present himself at the head of the party but does not hide his presidential ambitions, number 2 as vice-president.
He will also be supported by a representative of the new generation, Aurélien Pradié, 33, who has recently won the vote by the majority of a bill LR against domestic violence.
LR's organizational chart is "three-fold": a team of vice-presidents, a team of secretaries (generals and deputies) and a strategic committee. The latter structure welcomes the former rivals of Mr. Jacob for the head of the party, Julien Aubert and Guillaume Larrivé, as well as elected officials such as Senate President Gérard Larcher.
Among his criteria of choice, Christian Jacob emphasized the local anchoring. "We have been criticized for being too Parisian.The idea is to deconcentrate" and "almost 50% of the management team are elected officials of the territories.It is practically parity," he said. emphasized while the battle of the municipal is looming.
The old caciques have not been forgotten: Nadine Morano, Brice Hortefeux, Rachida Dati or Renaud Muselier will be political advisers.
To carry out the moult of his party, Christian Jacob has fixed some important meetings; a national council before the end of the year to ratify the investitures at the municipal, then a congress before the summer which will be "the great meeting of ideas", and finally the constitution of a youth movement that will gather in September.
For its part, Marine Le Pen criticized the lack of political line Republicans who "do not want to choose" between LREM and the RN. "They try to maintain, with bad glue" people "ready to vote differently," she said.
© 2019 AFP