Paris (AFP)
Five candidates are vying for their votes: LREM deputies begin the election of the new president of their group on Wednesday, affected by a series of departures, to replace Gilles Le Gendre, who resigned.
The former Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner and the deputy for Yvelines, Aurore Bergé are favorites of an election with an uncertain outcome.
The former Minister of the Ecological Transition François de Rugy, the deputy of Hérault Coralie Dubost and his counterpart of Seine-Saint-Denis Patrice Anato are also in the running.
The first round of the election, which will take place electronically, will take place on Wednesday afternoon from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The second round, scheduled for Thursday morning from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., will decide between the two candidates who came out on top.
The name of the winner will be officially announced Thursday at midday while the deputies of the majority group will meet near Amiens on the occasion of their parliamentary days.
The five candidates debated with the deputies "marchers" Tuesday morning in the Assembly, by increasing the calls for the assembly and the remobilization.
The winner of this election will take over from the deputy for Paris Gilles Le Gendre, who had been faced with a series of departures, in particular to two new parliamentary groups, Ecologie Démocratie Solidarité and Agir Ensemble.
The LREM group, weakened by these defections, again recorded three new departures to the Modem allies at the start of the week.
The future president will be the third since the start of the term in 2017, after Richard Ferrand and Gilles Le Gendre, who announced his resignation in July.
The latter had in particular been weakened in early June after the leak in the press of a "note" to Emmanuel Macron on a ministerial reshuffle, in which he seemed to plead for a change of Prime Minister and proposed - which he denied - a new government casting.
© 2020 AFP