Paris (AFP)

The former ally of Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election in 2017 Nicolas Dupont-Aignan announced on Saturday his candidacy for the Elysee Palace in 2022 to offer the French "the choice" and escape a Macron-Le Pen duel.

"You can no longer endure this power which destroys you (...). And to oppose a fatal duel for the country in 2022 which would make Macron re-elect until 2027, there is a choice," said the deputy sovereignist in front of several hundred activists gathered at the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris.

However, the latter did not have the premiere of the announcement, given by the candidate a few hours earlier on TF1.

This is the third time that Mr. Dupont-Aignan, who left the UMP in 2007 to create Debout la République (now Debout la France), is running for the Elysée.

In 2017, he obtained 4.7% of the vote and in 2012, 1.79% in the first round.

"80% of the French (...) do not want to see the second round of 2017 again in 2022 because they have understood very well that it is the last maneuver of Emmanuel Macron to remain, in the minority, in power for five years of more ", declared Mr. Dupont-Aignan evoking" a death trap for the country ".

"I will not let Emmanuel Macron choose his opponent so that we can resume for five years," he continued.

For him, the President of the national rally, who had proposed to him in 2017 to become his Prime Minister in case of victory, cannot win alone.

Nicolas Dupont-Aignan wanted "the French to have the possibility of comparing, of choosing, between very different personalities, projects, and behaviors".

For this deadline, the president of DLF had called in January for the organization of a "big primary" in the camp of the conservative right, sovereignist and the extreme right.

Marine Le Pen had opposed an end of inadmissibility but wished to "work together".

The former right-hand man of Marine Le Pen, Florian Philippot, now president of the small party Les Patriotes, pleaded for a "common house of sovereignists" on Saturday in front of supporters of Mr. Dupont-Aignan.

The two officials plan to work together.

"We can understand the despair of our fellow citizens" in the face of "Islamist barbarism", the "closure of factories", the "outburst of violence this summer" and "the calamitous management of the Covid by the government", but " this defeatism of "too late" is unworthy of our history ", hammered the deputy of Essonne.

Mr. Dupont-Aignan notably promised to organize a referendum on the abolition of the right to the soil, to make "the + produce in France + the heart of (its) economic policy", to break "unilaterally the unfair free trade agreements ", or to double the number of intensive care beds with the money from the destruction of" false vital cards ".

© 2020 AFP