Paris (AFP)
The Republicans party, in turmoil after the tension this week of its candidate Renaud Muselier in the Paca region, "is becoming a satellite of the National Gathering," government spokesman Gabriel Attal said on Sunday on France 3.
LR "is totally divided between on the one hand those who want to make a pact with the National Rally and the others (...) By dint of making a big difference, they arrived at a breakdown between these two tendencies", asserted Mr. Attal.
"It is this drift that we are witnessing. It is worrying, we see it during this campaign but I think that the germs were there," he insisted.
Prime Minister Jean Castex announced Sunday, May 2 the withdrawal from the LREM list led in this region by Secretary of State Sophie Cluzel in favor of Mr. Muselier's list, causing a crisis at LR.
Mr. Muselier, outgoing president of the region, then backtracked, leading Ms. Cluzel to maintain her list.
The deadline for filing the lists is May 17th.
Until then, explained Gabriel Attal, either the LR candidate "is ready, as he had initially proposed, to welcome members of the presidential majority", or the latter "will present autonomous lists in this region" .
The Macronie regional offensive is also being deployed in Hauts-de-France with the entry into the campaign of the Keeper of the Seals Eric Dupond-Moretti against the outgoing ex-LR Xavier Bertrand and the RN.
Gabriel Attal justified this late entry on Sunday by the desire of LREM to "promote (his) project and ensure to fight against the RN", putting in the background the rivalry with Xavier Bertrand, also a presidential candidate from 2022.
"It is not a target, Xavier Bertrand, it is not an enemy. It is an adversary who himself says that he will not worry about the region once the election has passed", a- he tackled in reference to the candidacy of Mr. Bertrand for the presidential election.
The RN "is a danger for democracy in the event of victory", abounded the President of the Assembly Richard Ferrand on Radio J. And "if there is a risk FN it is that the outgoing Renaud Muselier and Xavier Bertrand did not succeed ".
For him "logically Mrs. Cluzel will lead her list" in Paca.
"Whether the apparatuses are Republican or Socialist, they are obviously all as sectarian" to refuse any alliance with the majority and "that will not bring them luck", according to Richard Ferrand.
The leader of the deputies LR Damien Abad retorted on Twitter that "by their laxity in matters of security, by their inability to reform justice, by their little political calculation, by their permanent desire to want to atomize the right, the power in place has a great responsibility in the rise of the RN ".
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