after joining the RN, Eric Ciotti “true to himself” and without qualms

The steep road, which crosses the Vésubie valley (Alpes-Maritimes), winds between the mountains. It runs along sheer rock faces and passes under narrow, dark tunnels. On the night of Monday June 24 to Tuesday June 25, violent rains caused significant damage in the village of Saint-Martin-Vésubie, where Eric Ciotti grew up. The waters rose suddenly, two bridges were washed away. A desolate landscape, like the right which exploded, the day after the electoral alliance forcibly formed by the president of the Les Républicains (LR) party with the National Rally (RN), against the advice of the all the barons of his party. “It’s blowing hard”recognizes the person concerned before The world, Wednesday June 26, in the back of the car which took him back to Nice, after a brief support visit to his native village.

Acting one “historical break”, Eric Ciotti has no qualms. He even assures that he has never felt so good, like ” released “. After so many“ideological acrobatics” who had ended up by the “weary”he is finally ” true to [lui]-even “. “The masks are falling”, predicted Emmanuel Macron on June 12. If he has often changed bosses (Christian Estrosi, against whom he turned, François Fillon, Nicolas Sarkozy, then François Fillon again…), the former “Mr. Security” of the right has always defended a uncompromising line on immigration and security, following in the footsteps of Charles Pasqua.

In 2021, while he was competing in the right-wing primary, he had multiplied the shock proposals, aligned with those of the RN: elimination of land law, “national preference” on employment and housing, creation of a “French-style Guantanamo”… He also does not hesitate to accept the xenophobic theory of the “great replacement”. Since his agreement with Marine Le Pen’s party, the president of LR, whom the other party leaders want to remove from office, has had to make compromises, particularly on pensions. He puts things into perspective : once in power, he believes, “pragmatism will set in”.

An activist in the Rally for the Republic (RPR) since the age of 16, the deputy for Alpes-Maritimes has often evoked the memory of a great-uncle from Corrèze, a former resistance fighter who became a municipal councilor of Saint-Martin-Vésubie, who gave him conveyed his admiration for General de Gaulle and Jacques Chirac. At the time of announcing his alliance with the extreme right, Tuesday June 11 on TF1, Eric Ciotti does not have a thought for the former president, who affirmed that “extremism degrades and sullies the honor of France”son testament. “I was never a Chirac supporter”he says, recalling that in the 1995 presidential election he supported Edouard Balladur, who, three years later, in the 1998 regional elections, had been tempted to enter into an agreement with Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front. , without giving in.

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