Montpellier (AFP)

Clothilde Ollier, the candidate from whom EELV withdrew her support for the municipal elections in Montpellier on Saturday, announced Monday that she was maintaining her list, denouncing "tampering with another age" which "discredits politics".

These methods "set in motion the losing machine", declared during a press conference Mrs. Ollier, who had won four years ago the primary citizen organized by her party and which the polls placed at the head for the ballot: "Would have do we dare to attack me in this way, if I were not a woman, single mother and nurse in the emergency room? ".

"It's completely crazy, I can't understand the obscure reasons for the sanction that strikes me," continued the forty-something candidate. "What am I criticized for having gathered around my candidacy a large gathering" which "resembles all the others?", She asked herself, citing the examples of Perpignan, Sète, Grenoble or Bordeaux.

According to her, the rally which she had built, judged too far to the left by certain EELV executives, was done with "the participation of all the activists on the ground" of the party.

LFI deputy from Montpellier Muriel Ressiguier, EELV regional councilor Christian Dupraz, leftist radical Virginie Rozière and activists from the Confluence movement, including many rebels, surrounded Ms. Ollier Monday evening in support.

"I will not give in! (...) An environmental emergency physician will be mayor of Montpellier on March 22. Mobilize!", She exclaimed in conclusion.

Clothilde Ollier "had turned his back on all commitments vis-à-vis the collective, including on flagship environmental proposals", accused Sunday the national secretary of EELV Julien Bayou, evoking with AFP the "broken confidence "between the candidate and her party to justify the decision of the national office.

On January 13, Ms. Ollier had announced that she was replacing her campaign manager Manu Reynaud, a local EELV executive in favor of a rapprochement with the PS, by the academic and political scientist Jean-Yves Dormagen. On January 16, three emissaries were dispatched to Montpellier by the national management of EELV in an attempt to ease tensions in its campaign.

A local assembly of ecologists must take place on February 3 to formally dismiss the candidate and choose another head of the list.

The environmentalist vote was already divided in Montpellier because Jean-Louis Roumégas, beaten in the October primary, had shouted for fraud and should present his own list.

© 2020 AFP