“Tomorrow begins another election”, launched the green Yannick Jadot Sunday evening after the results of regional and departmental. In the aftermath of a ballot massively shunned by the French, politicians are now turning to the presidential election of 2022. Ten months before the supreme election, Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron want to quickly move on. At the National Rally, Sunday’s disappointment complicates the launch of the presidential campaign, because the ballot was targeted by party strategists.
“Winning over a region would allow us to show that we are capable of managing a large community, like La Lega [La Ligue, extrême droite] in Italy, which administers large regions. For us, this doubt still exists, it must be removed. It is a major stake for the credibility of the movement ”, said Philippe Olivier, adviser to Marine Le Pen. Denouncing the historic abstention, the RN candidate recognized the need, with a view to 2022, to “recreate a dynamic which would have been almost automatic with very good results in the regional”. It will begin with the movement’s congress on July 3 and 4 in Perpignan.
“Macron does not need LREM to be reelected”
Same disappointment for the candidates of La République en Marche, who projected themselves as “kingmakers” in the second round and even hoped to win the Center-Val-de-Loire. Traveling to Douai (North) to visit a factory, Emmanuel Macron did not comment on Sunday’s poor results, having already warned that he would not draw national lessons from these polls. At most he slipped that abstention “says a lot of things” and that “we will all have to draw the consequences”.
The LREM deputy of the Rhône Bruno Bonnell recognizes a “disavowal” for the walkers, but prefers to focus on 2022. “Macron does not need LREM to be reelected”, slices the parliamentarian. “The party must go back to the original promise to re-enchant politics. We must concentrate on mobilizing the French ”. As for the deficit of local elected representatives, who would have been useful for the future campaign, Bruno Bonnell thinks that LREM can compensate for it by “active and numerous militants”.
On the right, summer will be hot
Strengthened by the ballot, the right is already turning, too, towards 2022. And, unsurprisingly, it was Xavier Bertrand who first launched the battle to come. The president of Hauts-de-France and former Republicans, reelected with 52.37% of the vote far ahead of the RN (25.65%), confirmed his candidacy for the presidential election. “This result gives me the strength to go out and meet all French people. “
But a member of LR management warns: “Being elected president of a region does not qualify for the presidential election.” Especially since Laurent Wauquiez and Valérie Pécresse, brilliantly returned to Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Ile-de-France, could, like others (Bruno Retailleau, François Baroin, Michel Barnier), join the party.
With his usual calm, LR boss Christian Jacob procrastinated Sunday evening, calling for unity from the party’s HQ. “We have to take the time for the in-depth work, to come together. And in November, there will have to be only one candidate from our political family. This is how we will win. “At the end of a meeting on Monday, the party specified that the system of deciding between the right-wing contenders at the Elysee Palace would be set on September 30 and submitted to activists, while two polls should be launched in the fall to try to clear a champion.
PS and EELV continue to claim the central position
Relations between the Socialist Party and Europe Ecologie-The Greens are likely to be strained in the coming weeks. Sunday evening, everyone used the results to claim leadership on the left, hoping to unite in the run-up to the presidential election. “The reality is that when the deal comes true [entre écologistes et socialistes], there is a glass ceiling, or even a green ceiling, which means that the Socialists are today the most credible to lead these gatherings ”, tackled the boss of the PS Olivier Faure
on RMC, denouncing the lack of “credibility” of environmentalists. “The PS remains the keystone of the rally”, adds
on Twitter Emmanuel Grégoire, the right arm of Anne Hidalgo, who will make his decision for 2022 in the fall.
On the EELV side, the ballot is read in reverse. “The PS has lost its ideological centrality and has not been able to unite in several regions, or else they have shown a hegemonic will, in a disrespectful way as in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté”, replies MEP David Cormand. “The ecological force is actually the only dynamic and will have its candidacy in September after the primary. What the PS will do is not our problem, ”adds the former boss of the movement.