Paris (AFP)
The Republicans, pushed into the crisis by LREM, are shaken by the psychodrama around regional Paca which continued Thursday with the resignation of Christian Estrosi, but want to believe in a beneficial "clarification" for 2022.
Mayor LR of Nice slammed the door denouncing "the drift of a faction which seems to have taken the party leadership hostage" and calling for clarification on the position vis-à-vis the National Rally.
For Christian Estrosi, considered "Macron-compatible", and who had launched his political movement "daring France" in September, "it is time to reconstitute a large" center-right "political formation around a real project".
This departure, the second after that of the mayor of Toulon Hubert Falco on Wednesday, comes to close a stormy streak since Sunday, which had led LR to reject the idea of alliance with LREM in the Paca region advanced by Jean Castex in the JDD, in the name of the fight against the extreme right.
"I regret the departures but it is consistent," said party chairman Christian Jacob.
By holding firm on the refusal of alliance "we have shown that, in difficult times, the LR family is solid".
These departures "do not change the fact that we have 105 deputies", recalls an LR executive, who protests: "our political family will not disappear because Emmanuel Macron wants to set up a duel with Marine Le Pen".
But in recent days, the right has had to face an offensive from the Macronist camp to deepen its divisions, several ministers talking about the divorce of "two irreconcilable rights" between "Republicans" and close to the RN.
In particular in question, remarks of the deputy LR Eric Ciotti like what what "globally differentiates" his party from the RN is the "capacity to govern".
At LR, we ensure that the words have been taken out of context.
"We are and will remain determined opponents of the National Rally ideology," Jacob repeated Thursday.
"We have just experienced an episode of political politics in the most caricatural sense of the term," Jean-François Cope said on LCI on Wednesday.
At LR, which keeps a good local anchoring and begins to see returning members, we are enraged by the "nuisance capacity" of an LREM party "unable to carry a regional project under (its) colors" for lack of local elected officials .
- "Hard blow" -
The right is also annoyed that the offensive has come from the Presidency and Prime Minister Jean Castex, from its ranks.
For Mr. Perrineau, this streak "is a hard blow for LR, but they can get over it. Everything will depend on the dynamics in the polls. If they have the ability to get closer to 20%, in a few months it will be. forget it".
The right here comes up against a difficulty, recalled by Mr. Woerth: "We need a candidate for the presidential election who can make the synthesis".
"The drama of the right is this descent into hell since our elders started a fratricidal war between them which led to the disaster in 2017, and to scrupulously ensure that there is no succession" , according to Mr. Cope.
Several potential candidates are preparing behind the scenes, but the right has not yet chosen its candidate, nor decided on the advisability of a primary.
The management does not want it, fearing a new war of egos whose outbursts of recent days, as well as their repercussions, may have given a foretaste.
In this crisis, the ex-LR president of Hauts-de-France, Xavier Bertrand, already declared for 2022, took the initiative by writing to LR parliamentarians to urge them to unity, then by denouncing an Emmanuel Macron, "calculator cold "which" sets up the objective conditions for the victory of the extreme right ".
For the LR deputy of Pas-de-Calais Pierre-Henri Dumont, "two people knew how to guide LR during this storm: Christian Jacob and Xavier Betrrand" who "is becoming more and more the natural candidate for the right".
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