"Yes, I will be a candidate" for the French presidential election in 2022, said Xavier Bertrand in an interview published Wednesday March 24 by the weekly Le Point.
Presenting himself as a "social Gaullist, of a social and popular right", the president of Hauts-de-France, formerly responsible for Les Républicains, says he is "totally determined".
"In the current situation in France, I believe it is my duty," he added, continuing: "My duty is to beat Marine Le Pen and to do everything to bring the French together."
Refusal to participate in a right-wing primary
"I have a Gaullian conception of the presidential election: it is the meeting of a man or a woman with the French, around a vision and a project. This is why I no longer wish register in the logic of a single party. I will not participate in a primary ", specifies this former minister of François Fillon and Nicolas Sarkozy.
A delicate subject while the right is struggling to find the providential man for 2022.
"My political family has many talents, and I will bring them all together around my project," promises the former Minister of Health, who had already regularly expressed his ambitions for 2022 in recent months.
Defending his vision of "a proud, recovered and reconciled France", Xavier Bertrand, aged 56, is developing a "clear project: to restore the authority of the State, turn the page on Parisian centralism and redo the key to work. arch of our national project ".
"Put an end to the decline" of France
In the wake of his message of regal firmness developed this fall, he promises that the "first act" of his mandate would be to "present the French with a five-year programming law for their security", which means "to increase security budgets. and justice ".
He also proposes to "lower to 15 years the age of criminal majority", to introduce "automatic minimum sentences" and to build 20,000 prison places, "no less".
On immigration, he promises to "regain control" with "a policy of quotas", and that expulsions are "systematically executed".
Xavier Bertrand, for whom the yellow vests crisis is "not an accident" but "a final warning", also believes that it is necessary to "establish the Republic of the territories", and that "without changing the Constitution, we must change diet ".
The value of work "must once again become the essential, the cement of the nation", to allow "to put an end to the decline of our country and the downgrading of the French", he adds, because according to him "the success of a country cannot rely on the 'first to the ropes' alone ".
Several other candidates have already officially embarked on the race for the Élysée, including Marine Le Pen (National Rally) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France insoumise).
With AFP and Reuters
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