"I am a free and indomitable woman, I will be calm in the storm, I will stay the course until the Elysée", launched the LR presidential candidate to the applause of 2,000 spectators.

This regional meeting was eagerly awaited after that of Sunday in Paris, considered to be a failure by many.

"She wanted to give emphasis, it does not suit her at all! She must remain herself", affirmed in the afternoon Evelyne Seervaes, elector of François Fillon in 2017, crossed in Cannes.

In this LR bastion, the staging was more classic: young LRs seated on stage, several regional tenors intervening before her, two French and European flags in the background...

Above all, Valérie Pécresse spoke without notes, pacing the podium and interpellating her speech of almost an hour with questions to the public, far from the frozen attitude at the desk which had left a calamitous image at the Zenith.

"Friends, are you ready to weather the storms with me? Are you ready for victory? I am, so follow me!"

she launched to the room, arousing massive "yes".

A change of tone which the spectators welcomed: "she was impeccable", assured after the meeting Geneviève, 75 years old.

"She has improved a lot, we feel that she is more comfortable, she was much more convincing than at Zenith", affirmed Valérie, 47, who like Geneviève did not wish to give her surname) .

In this speech, the candidate losing ground in the polls pounded the macronie, deploring to be "the target of all the attacks since January".

"It's the ball of the hypocrites" with "a totally unhealthy game of LREM to raise the extremes" and ensure the re-election of Emmanuel Macron, she launched.

"Mr. Macron is going to present his candidacy, he had better apologize," she said before vilifying the results of a "zig-zag president": "migratory Berézina", "school out of breath ", justice "drowned and abandoned"...

"Five years was too much, ten years will be too late," she snapped.

"Reconciliation"

By contrast, she defended her project for a “new France” for the post-Covid period, where “we will have to repair everything, rebuild everything”.

"I want to make my project known, I don't want it to be deformed, to be reduced to just one of its parts, it's a real project of alternation for Emmanuel Macron", she had assured in the afternoon during a press point, assuring: "I trace my route".

Meeting of Valérie Pécresse in Cannet on February 18, 2022 LOIC VENANCE AFP

Describing herself as "the payroll candidate", she lamented in her speech that retirees are the "sacrifices" of Macron's five-year term and promised to restore the universality of family allowances.

"We are going to debureaucratize everything, simplify everything" in health, she assured before triggering applause with her firm speech on immigration, in the stronghold department of Eric Ciotti: end of land rights and family reunification automatic, asylum at the borders...

No allusion in this speech to the "great replacement" which had created a controversy after the Zenith, the candidate assuring: "whatever her origin, her skin color, her identity, I will be the president of national reconciliation, of All the french people".

Valérie Pécresse, however, left the sovereign to develop other axes of her project, in particular on the "educational nation" and the "return to fundamentals" at school that she promises, and on "an ecology which is not a punishment".

Sometimes accused of not caring enough for Nicolas Sarkozy who, for the time being, has not given him official support, she paid tribute to the former head of state from whom she "learned a lot".

As "faithful heiress of General De Gaulle", she also promised to "rehabilitate the referendum", in particular on immigration and security, and to relaunch the popular initiative referendum.

© 2022 AFP