Perpignan (AFP)
The environmental candidate for mayor of Perpignan, Agnès Langevine, who came in 3rd position in the first round with 14.5% of the vote, announced on Saturday that she would withdraw, to block the candidate of the National Rally and favorite of the ballot, Louis Aliot.
At the head of an EELV-PS list, the vice-president of the Occitanie regional council had been beaten by the deputy RN Louis Aliot (35.6%) and the outgoing LR mayor, Jean-Marc Pujol (18.5 %). She invokes in a statement sent to AFP "a republican duty of public health" to explain her decision.
"I call on all voters to use their vote to definitively confine the ambitions of the candidate of the National Rally and to vote for the list which remains opposed to him," she said in a statement addressed to the 'AFP.
"I am afraid to see the Perpignais.es direct their anger and their rage towards a mortal choice. That of the decline of the city, the withdrawal of identity and the deconfinement of hatred," added the ecologist, stressing that his movement had tripled its 2014 score.
Thursday, it was the candidate LREM Romain Grau (13% in the 1st round) who had given up, a "republican withdrawal" also aimed at preventing the Lepéniste party from seizing the town hall of this city of 120,000 inhabitants.
Jean-Marc Pujol, a 71-year-old lawyer, has been a municipal councilor since 1989 and mayor since 2009, when he had succeeded Jean-Paul Alduy.
In 2014, Jean-Marc Pujol had beaten Mr. Aliot in the second round, benefiting from a good carryover of votes after the withdrawal of the PS candidate.
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