France: young LR call to unite quickly for the presidential election
Audio 01:15
Headquarters of the Les Républicains party (Illustrative image) © Bertrand Guay / AFP
Text by: RFI Follow
4 min
In France, the conservative party is back to school this weekend with the Les Républicains youth summer school.
More than 1,500 of them gathered for two days at the Parc Floral de Paris.
Eight months before the presidential election, young activists are calling for unity and a primary to decide between the five candidates from the right, while the tie-breaking mechanism is still not clear.
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Xavier Bertrand booed when his face appears on the big screen.
For many of the young LR gathered at the Parc Floral, it would be difficult to vote for the one who goes it alone.
By participating in this new school year and in the primary, Valérie Pécresse reaches out to these activists who criticize the two favorites in the polls for having left the party.
For Hanane, disappointed that Laurent Wauquiez is not a candidate, it will be Michel Barnier: “
There is Valérie Pécresse that must be distinguished from Xavier Bertrand because she is in favor of a primary.
Xavier Bertrand, he sort of betrayed our party.
For me, it won't be a natural fit.
We expect a lot, especially from Michel Barnier.
"
Mathieu dreams that the polemicist Éric Zemmour is integrated into the tiebreaker of the right: “
To be able to win the presidential election against Emmanuel Macron, we must be able to remove voters from Marine Le Pen.
The best candidate is Éric Zemmour.
"
All insist in any case on the need to have a single candidate.
Like the president of the young people LR Guilhem Carayon: "
The message that we want to send to all the candidates of the primary is:" come
together as quickly as possible. Create the conditions of unity that all the activists and especially as quickly as possible.
"Because it will be too late if we are all united, but only in January.
He will have resentments that will be born and that we will not be able to appease.
"
And for the majority of these young activists, the primary is the only solution to appoint a legitimate candidate.
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