In the aftermath of the electoral disaster marked by Valérie Pécresse’s failure in the first round of the presidential election (4.78%), Les Républicains gathered on Monday morning at the party headquarters to make several decisions and try to avoid implosion.
“Our political family,” declared Christian Jacob, “has always been and remains a determined opponent of the Rassemblement National. No vote should go to Marine Le Pen. Her political and economic project would lead us to chaos.”
So it is a “no” for MLP, but it is not a “yes” for her opponent either since the movement’s official position does not include an explicit call to vote for candidate Macron.
In fact, relatively speaking, this position is reminiscent of Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea, who symbolically washed his hands by refusing to make a decision regarding Jesus’ execution and delegated it to the crowd (as can be read in the Gospels).
This “neither yes nor no” adopted after a vote concluded with 13 abstentions out of nearly 130 people (including that of Éric Ciotti, leaning towards a blank vote or for MLP?) and one vote against (Guillaume Larrivé, in favor of an alliance) clearly shows the crisis state of a party, once the pillar of parliamentary democracy, now reduced to a collection of local barons, managers of their fiefdoms but unable to establish a significant political line or perspective.
However, among them, several senior officials, including Valérie Pécresse, have explicitly declared their support for candidate Macron.
This first round of the 2022 presidential election is a monumental slap for the party and its candidate, but the crisis has deep roots: have we already forgotten the result of the 2019 European election? With the little-known Versailles native François-Xavier Bellamy as the head of the list, 8.5%!
In fact, since Nicolas Sarkozy’s non-election in 2012, the UMP/LR has never again had a leadership capable of giving the party a new impetus. In light of the recent past and the present, its future raises more than one question mark.
