Ten days before the first round of the elections, he has not yet publicly given his support to his party’s candidate
The silence of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy weighs down the campaign of Valérie Pécresse, the Republican candidate for the French presidential elections. Ten days before the first round of the elections, Sarkozy has not yet publicly given his support to the candidate of his party.
Pécresse, president of the Île de France (the Parisian region), is fifth in the polls behind outgoing president Emmanuel Macron, far-right leader Marine Le Pen, far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the far-right Eric Zemmour.
Despite his legal problems, Sarkozy, who was president of France between 2007 and 2012, maintains great influence on the French right. The reasons why he has not yet supported Pécresse could be multiple, according to the French press. The first is that Sarkozy does not want to support a loser. She is fifth in the polls and it is clear that she will not be the first president of France.
Another reason, according to some analysts, would be Sarkozy’s desire for revenge. Pécresse first supported Alain Juppé in the right-wing primaries in 2017 and then François Fillon, who would ultimately be the conservative candidate in those elections. Sarkozy was eliminated in the first round of the primaries for his party.
The fact that Pécresse continually refers to Chirac, his godfather-in-law, in his speeches, does not seem to please Carla Bruni’s husband either. Pécresse has never been a sarkozysta, despite having been his minister.
Some nods from the candidate to Sarkozy during the campaign have been of little use. She promised that if she is elected president she will bring “the Kärcher (pressure cleaner) out of the basement” to “clean the neighbourhoods” of criminals and drug dealers, an expression Sarkozy has already used. And she said that the former conservative president had had “the beautiful intuition” to tell the French that “you have to work more to earn more.”
Sarkozy also did not like that, after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Pécresse recognized that “in retrospect” the former socialist president François Hollande was right to have canceled in 2015 the sale to Moscow of French Mistral-type helicopter carriers in response to the accession of Crimea. Moscow and Paris had signed a sale agreement in 2011 under the presidency of Sarkozy.
Furthermore, throughout the campaign there have been numerous rumors that Sarkozy might support Macron before the first round, which has not happened so far. The two politicians maintain very good relations.
According to the newspaper Le Parisien, no one in the Republican party believes that Sarkozy will support his former minister in the final stretch of the campaign. Proof of this is that, according to the French press, he will not attend the great meeting of Pécresse in Paris this Sunday.
Pécresse, who likes to compare herself to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has an excellent resume. She has been an auditor in the Council of State, an adviser to President Jacques Chirac, a deputy, a government spokesperson and twice a minister under Sarkozy. She directs since 2015 Île de France, the most populous region in France and the richest. She was re-elected in July 2021 with 43.8% of the vote.
Her opponents attack her saying that ideologically she and the centrist Macron are similar. Pécresse has difficulty making a difference with Macron and attracting voters. She, too, has no margin on the extreme right, where Marine Le Pen, a candidate for National Regrouping (former National Front), and Éric Zemmour, a candidate for Reconquista, compete.
If this Sunday the first round of the presidential elections were held in France, Macron would obtain 28% of the votes, followed by Le Pen with 21% of the votes. Both would qualify for the second round.
Mélenchon, candidate of La Francia Insumisa (the French Podemos), is in third place with 15.5% of voting intentions. Zemmour would get 10.5% and Pécresse 9.5%. To the left of the political board, the environmentalist Yannick Jadot would collect 4%; the communist Fabien Roussel, 2.5%; and the socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo, only 2%.
#Sarkozys #silence #hampers #campaign #conservative #Valérie #Pécresse