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Paris- The move by French conservative Republican leader Eric Sciotti to propose an unprecedented alliance with the leader of the National Rally has caused an earthquake in the field and dealt a heavy blow to the already fragile far-right “cordon française” (RN), Marine Le Pen.
In a television interview on TF1, France’s most watched channel, Ciotti heightened the tension in the country’s political environment, which has already been highly charged since the announcement by the country’s president, Emmanuel Macron, that he would call early legislative elections on June 30 (first round) and on July 7 (second round) following the landslide victory of Marine Le Pen’s party in last Sunday’s European elections.
“We need an alliance with the National Rally,” Ciotti said on TF1, in which he justified his position because his party itself was “too weak” to defend “right-wing values” compared to other large political blocs.
The latest polls show that the National Assembly could win an outright majority in the National Assembly, the lower house of France’s legislature, if it gets support from the conservatives, which would impose a far-right prime minister and government on Macron.
Ciotti’s words caused an unprecedented shock in the Republican Party, the party that inherited former presidents Charles de Gaulle and Jacques Chirac and was re-formed by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2015, leaving the National Group (RN) with a smile; while Macronists and the left oscillated between anger and confusion.
The PRF has ruled France under different names for 39 years, longer than any other party since the Fifth Republic was proclaimed in 1958, since the emergence of the far-right under Jean-Marie Le Pen (Marine Le Pen’s father), the founder of the National Front (the predecessor of the Front National) in the 1980s, who had boasted of being a pillar of stability against extremes.
After the statement, Sciotti met with the party’s executive, with whom he intended to confirm the principles of the agreement he had reached with Marine Le Pen and her dolphins and the prime ministerial candidate Jordan Bardella: maintaining the 61 representatives of the National Party in parliament and preventing the RNs from presenting alternative candidates in these constituencies.
Ciotti called it a “cordon d’oeil” against the far right, whose peak was the 2002 presidential election, when progressive voters “pinched their noses” to vote for Jacques Chirac to defeat Marine Le Pen Sr., calling him “outdated and ill-fitting.”
The famous “Republican dam” that holds back less-than-fully democratic parties had already begun to falter in 2017, with Macron’s first election, and was confirmed in 2022, when the gap between Macron and Marine Le Pen narrowed further.
A fighting match
Sciotti was immediately harshly criticized by many heavyweights in the party and called for his resignation.
The most institutionally influential Republican to denounce the agreement is Senate President Gérard Larcher, the country’s second-most powerful figure after the President of the Republic.
In a message ».
Michel Barnier, the former minister, EU commissioner and EU negotiator on the Brexit deal, also came out to say that Ciotti “no longer has any legitimacy to speak on behalf of the Conservative political family”.
He was joined by other prominent conservatives, such as Valérie Pécresse, president of the region that includes Paris, and Laurent Wauquiez, president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region and leader of the Conservative party from 2017 to 2019, as were other lawmakers and regional leaders.
Faced with an overwhelming barrage of criticism that foreshadowed a split in the historic party, Sciotti responded by saying that what mattered to him was “the base of its members” and criticised the media for “giving so much propaganda” to the far right while ignoring the real problems of the French.
The first time I got super close, I failed
The deadline for forming a candidate expired on the 16th and the electoral campaign between the Macronists and their partners has yet to gain notable momentum, while the left claims to have made progress in forming an electoral coalition made up of the Socialists, the Greens and the Communists, with very different visions on issues such as European integration.
Marine Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal, proposed a hypothetical coalition that came close to failure, aimed at bringing her small anti-Islam party (the Reconquista) closer to the Royal Navy.
Marechal, herself a prominent figure of lepenism, who in 2012 became the youngest deputy of the Fifth Republic, assured today at X that her aunt’s party refuses to enter into a “direct or indirect” agreement with Eric Zemmour, leader of the Reconquista. Efe / IR
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