Marseilles (AFP)
After a bitter battle against the National Rally, LR Renaud Muselier was officially re-elected for seven years at the head of the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region on Friday and promised to closely involve the left in its governance.
Visibly moved after a campaign that he deemed "physically, morally, politically, humanly" difficult, he obtained 84 votes, the number of seats for his majority, against 39 blank votes, corresponding to the 39 councilors elected on the RN lists .
"My responsibility is immense," he said, surrounded by the mayors of Nice and Toulon Christian Estrosi and Hubert Falco and the new president of Vaucluse Dominique Santoni, in a region where the six departments are now in the hands of the right.
"I want to thank Jean-Laurent Félizia for his sense of responsibility," the candidate of the Ecological and Social Rally, who had retired to a Republican front the day after the first round, he continued.
Mr. Muselier promised to associate Mr. Félizia and Jean-Marc Governatori, the candidate of Cap Écologie who had called to vote for him between the two rounds, in the "governance" of the region: "I make the solemn oath. ".
After the withdrawal of Mr. Félizia, Renaud Muselier had notably promised the creation of a "committee" of twenty members to give voice to the left and environmentalists.
Even if the polls gave him neck and neck with the far right led by Thierry Mariani, Renaud Muselier had finally largely left his rival, with 57.3% of the votes cast.
This result was however marred by a massive abstention (to 63.2%) and in the end he was elected by only 704,431 votes, out of 3.5 million people registered in the region on the electoral lists.
"I think he understood that he could not derogate from the word he had given," said Jean-Laurent Félizia in La Marseillaise on Friday, inviting him to "redefine what he means by + Cop d 'advance + "and go" beyond "planting a million trees.
"The least of things is that we have at least rights superior to this group (of the left, editor's note) which does not exist in the meeting," for his part told AFP Thierry Mariani.
"Now we must make these institutions work. We will play our role, namely that when the majority will make constructive proposals, we will support them," he nevertheless assured, estimating that the urgency was to end the post-crisis crisis. Covid.
The left is no longer represented by elected officials in the regional hemicycle since 2015, when Christophe Castaner, then socialist, had also withdrawn between the two rounds to block the list of the RN led by Marion Maréchal- The pen.
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