It was a great catch-up oral for Valérie Pécresse who held her second major campaign meeting this Friday in Cannet (Alpes-Maritimes) after the false start of the Zénith de Paris, to pugnaciously establish her project of “New France”, eclipsed by controversy. “I am a free and indomitable woman, I will be calm in the storm, I will stay the course until the Élysée”, launched the LR presidential candidate to the applause of 2,000 spectators.
This regional meeting was eagerly awaited after that of Sunday in Paris, considered to be a failure by many. In this LR bastion, the staging was more classic: young LRs seated on stage, several regional tenors intervening before her, two French and European flags in the background.
Above all, Valérie Pécresse paced the podium and interpellated with questions to the public her speech of almost an hour, far from the frozen attitude at the desk which had left a calamitous image at the Zenith. “Friends, are you ready to weather the storms with me? Are you ready for victory? I am, so follow me! she launched to the room, eliciting massive “yes”. A change of tone which the spectators welcomed: “She was impeccable”, assured after the meeting Geneviève, 75 years old. “She has improved a lot, we feel that she is more comfortable, she was much more convincing than at the Zenith,” said Valérie, 47. In sequences, the candidate LR, however, still seemed borrowed in the face of this public, however acquired.
In this speech, the candidate losing ground in the polls pounded the macronie, deploring to be “the target of all the attacks since January”. “It’s the ball of the hypocrites” with “a totally unhealthy game of LREM to raise the extremes” and ensure the re-election of Emmanuel Macron, she launched. “Mr. Macron is going to present his candidacy, he had better apologize,” she said before vilifying the record of a “zigzag president”: “migratory Berezina”, “school out of breath”, justice “drowned and abandoned”. “Five years was too much, ten years will be too late,” she snapped.
“Repair everything, rebuild everything”
By contrast, she defended her project for a “new France” for the post-Covid period, where “we will have to repair everything, rebuild everything”. “I want to make my project known, I don’t want it to be deformed, to be reduced to just one of its parts, it’s a real project of alternation for Emmanuel Macron”, she assured in the afternoon during a press point, assuring: “I trace my route”. Describing herself as “the payroll candidate”, she lamented in her speech that retirees are the “sacrifices” of Macron’s five-year term and promised to restore the universality of family allowances.
“We are going to debureaucratize everything, simplify everything” in health, she assured before triggering applause with her firm speech on immigration, in the stronghold department of Éric Ciotti: end of land rights and family reunification automatic, asylum at the borders.
However, no allusion in this speech to the “great replacement” which had created a controversy after the Zenith, the candidate assuring: “whatever her origin, her skin color, her identity, I will be the president of national reconciliation, of all French people. Eric Ciotti, wearing a harder line, was present in the front row and appreciated the performance of his candidate. “Tonight in the Alpes-Maritimes, Valérie Pécresse made a show of force. She will be the next President of the Republic.