The Republicans, deeply shaken by the dissent of a third of their deputies on the pension reform, preferred Tuesday not to exclude anyone and thus spare themselves a potentially fatal split.
“What we have undergone is an ordeal, somewhere also a failure”, admitted party president Eric Ciotti after a long sequence on pensions where internal divisions at LR culminated on Monday, during the spectacular vote of a motion of censure.
19 LR deputies out of the 61 in the group then approved a text which would have led to the overthrow of the government.
An earthquake on the right, while the staff of the Republicans had said and repeated its support for the pension reform at the heart of the vote of censure.
The dissidents had largely explained their vote upstream, arguing an injustice on long careers or the hostility aroused by the reform in their rural constituencies.
Still, “the sequence is catastrophic”, sighs an LR executive.
Some, pro-reform, have already called for a clear reaction: whoever signs the motion “no longer has a vocation to sit among us”, said MP Alexandre Vincendet on Monday.
Playing appeasement, Eric Ciotti ruled out any sanction Tuesday in strategic advice, according to several participants in the meeting.
We must “preserve the unity of our political family”, he told journalists, promising states-general of the right, on June 4, to bridge the differences through work on ideas.
Eyes were also turned to the deputy Aurélien Pradié, at the forefront of the sling on the pension reform, and accused of having very media privileged a personal agenda.
“We must commit to more loyalty to the collective”, warned without naming him the boss of the LR deputies Olivier Marleix. “Everyone measures that we will have to talk to each other again”, was content to declare the deputy for Lot after the strategic council.
Will this realization pay off?
“We stay together, but it’s precarious,” said a party executive.
Because the work on ideas risks coming up against positions that are difficult to reconcile: “what is at stake is the survival of the right, but also of a non-populist opposition to Emmanuel Macron”, considers MP Pierre-Henri Dumont, who voted for the cross-partisan censure motion.
Others question this very idea of ??being in the opposition, Jean-François Copé or Rachida Dati pleading for a political agreement with Emmanuel Macron.
In their efforts to clarify, the Republicans have little room for maneuver, as their political space has shrunk: difficult to exclude dissidents when you weigh only 4.8% of the votes in the presidential election.
But some call not to be paralyzed by the issue: “Nothing is worse than dying slowly”, thunders a close friend of Senator Bruno Retailleau.
For LR, the sequence of retirements will have been complicated from all points of view.
Monday’s motion of censure was voted by several relatives of Laurent Wauquiez, which raised questions among some, even as the president of the Auvergne Rhone-Alpes region passes for one of the few presidential candidates on the right.
The majority strongly criticized LR, whom she had nevertheless courted throughout the pension negotiations. “Within your group, personal trajectories and individual calculations have emerged, which are in no way motivated by the general interest”, launched Monday the president of the deputies Renaissance Aurore Bergé.
The Republicans have also lost feathers in public opinion: according to an Elabe poll, 76% of French people believe that they come out “weakened” from the sequence.
Finally, several elected officials have paid the price for this disaffection: the offices of deputies Eric Ciotti and Eric Pauget have been downgraded, and MEP Agnès Evren has filed a complaint after receiving death threats.
03/21/2023 17:08:18 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
