Presidential: for the Chiracs, "not a voice must be missing from Macron"

Europe 1 with AFP 2 p.m., April 19, 2022

Claude Chirac, daughter of former President Jacques Chirac, and her husband Frédéric Salat-Baroux, former secretary general of the Elysée Palace, called on Tuesday for "not a voice to be missing" from Emmanuel Macron against Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election.

"As Jacques Chirac said throughout his life, it's time to fight against extremism", they underline in a statement to AFP, and, "behind an apparently trivialized in-between rounds, the situation is infinitely more serious than in 2017 and 2002", when the National Front (now National Rally) had already climbed to the second round.

Criticism of the simple call for no vote to go to Le Pen

"Behind the role play of the confrontation, Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour go together", they warn, and "the far right does not have two faces but two faces".

"The first, by focusing on everyday concerns, has given itself the means to conquer power while the second federates and rebuilds a chilling ideology", they judge.

In their eyes, "faced with this reality, the answer is not to say 'not a voice should go to Marine Le Pen', which is a form of non-decision and laissez-faire", explicit criticism of the position adopted by the party Les Républicains but also France insoumise, "but in the clear and clear call for the Macron vote".

"For now, only one thing matters: not a voice must be missing from Emmanuel Macron," they insist.

The Chirac family does not give discharge to the president-candidate.

In an allusion to Emmanuel Macron's proposal for a rally, she believes in particular that "the answer cannot be in the constitution of a vast single body of government, with the only alternative being an ideologically reconstructed far right and far left".

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"The right is not dead"

"The right has been beaten but is not dead", judge Claude Chirac, who took up the torch from his mother Bernadette by being elected in June 2021 as departmental councilor in Corrèze, and Frédéric Salat-Baroux, secretary general of the Elysée between 2005 and 2007. While the LR candidate Valérie Pécresse, who had received the support of Claude Chirac, recorded a scathing defeat in the first round (4.8%), they call on the right to "renew itself by taking full account what must be at the heart of political action, equal opportunities and justice" and to "hear the message of a rising youth".

Between the two rounds of the 2002 presidential election, Jacques Chirac, who had refused the debate with Jean-Marie Le Pen, had castigated "extremism", which "degrades and tarnishes the image and even the honor from France".

And, in a quasi-testament during his last televised speech delivered from the Elysée on March 11, 2007, he called on the French to "never come to terms with extremism, racism, anti-Semitism or the rejection of other".

During the national tribute paid to the former head of state, who died in September 2019, Claude Chirac and her husband had wished that Marine Le Pen not attend the ceremony.