Paris (AFP)

Valérie Pécresse, freshly re-elected at the head of Ile-de-France, launched on Thursday in turn in the presidential race on the right, a way of not letting Xavier Bertrand occupy the field alone during the summer .

The former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy is running for the presidential election to "restore French pride", she said Thursday in an interview with Le Figaro and in the evening on TF1.

Defending a right "firm on the regal, secular but also ecological, liberal, pro-business, feminist and social", Valérie Pécresse had distanced herself from LR in 2017 by creating the Free movement! In opposition to the president of the party of the 'time, Laurent Wauquiez, considered too populist.

"I can not stand that we talk instead of acting", says the ex-LR, eager to "break with 10 years of bad choices, half-measures, indecision, and ultimately the sagging of our country ".

The candidate for the Elysee, who has just turned 54, says she wants to "do rather than seek to please", after a five-year term "with very few reforms", and wanting "to put the country in order", specifying that she was now going to travel the country during the summer.

"On security, on the order on justice on immigration, the + at the same time + it does not work", she said on TF1 by presenting herself as "more reformist than Emmanuel Macron" and having "more authority than Marine Le Pen".

Reelected in June at the head of Ile-de-France, she is the second contender to formalize her candidacy on the right, after her Hauts-de-France counterpart Xavier Bertrand, also ex-LR, at the end of March.

- "Team" -

"No one will win the 2022 presidential election alone. We can only win with a united team," warned in a tweet the president of LR Christian Jacob who had brought together Ms. Pécresse and four other putative presidential candidates on Tuesday.

All had agreed on a "single candidacy" of their camp for 2022, while Xavier Bertrand, absent from this meeting, refuses at this stage to participate in a primary.

He intends to pose as a unifier of his political family, at the risk of a standoff with his former party.

The leader of senators LR Bruno Retailleau, who had applied for a right-wing primary, hailed Ms. Pécresse's candidacy as a "sign of the vitality of the right".

"The primary is now a given," he tweeted.

"The competition is always healthy, provided of course that in the end there is only one candidate," said his counterpart in the Assembly Damien Abad, who supports Xavier Bertrand, repeating not wanting to be "caught. held hostage by a double candidacy ".

Mr. Abad is reserved on the primary, synonymous for the leadership of the party of "machine to lose".

- "Women's hour" -

Valérie Pécresse, for whom the primary is on the contrary the "only democratic solution", affirms to Le Figaro that she is "not afraid" and "will do everything to win and bring together".

"I am vaccinated against the divisions of the right" which "made us suffer enough", she said on TF1.

She had already promised to make "hear (her) voice" during the summer.

"The hour for women has come," she said in La Provence in early July.

Florence Portelli, vice-president of Ile-de-France and support of the candidate, affirmed on BFMTV that Ms. Pécresse was a candidate "whatever happens" and argued that a woman could access the "head of the country "and not just being Prime Minister.

Valérie Pécresse made her announcement just after launching a large part of her program at the head of the region on Wednesday.

"All the promises we have made, we must put them in place very quickly", she justified, accused by her opponents of "haste".

His candidacy for the Elysee "is the most masterful demonstration" that "the region is for her only a stepping stone", reacted to AFP Julien Bayou, national secretary of EELV, unsuccessful candidate in front of her regional and Ile-de-France advisers.

"Valérie Pécresse and Xavier Bertrand, who respectively suppressed 12,500 police and gendarmes and 5,000 hospital beds, are running for the presidential election to come and contemplate the extent of the damage they have committed as ministers?"

asked Jordan Bardella, RN number two and also Ile-de-France advisor.

© 2021 AFP