LThe Alpes-Maritimes MP Eric Ciotti, who Les Républicains had tried in vain to exclude since his alliance in June with the RN in the legislative elections, announced on Sunday that he was leaving the party and its presidency, thus opening the race for his succession.
“My decision to leave LR will allow us to rebuild a large political family with clarity and independence,” said the elected official in an interview posted online on the Figaro website.
At the end of August, he launched his own party called the Union of the Right for the Republic (UDR).
This decision comes three weeks before the hearing scheduled for October 14 where the courts were to rule on the exclusion by LR leaders of their president, who had refused to give up his functions and his office.
“I have won three times (in court) and I had no concerns about the hearing on October 14,” emphasizes Eric Ciotti, who chairs a group of 16 deputies in the Assembly. But the hearing “is no longer relevant, since I will have left the LR presidency and the LR party by then.”
Assuring that he had informed both the leader of the LR deputies Laurent Wauquiez and Marine Le Pen of his decision, Mr. Ciotti launched a new appeal to the LR elected representatives to join him in order to consolidate what he presents as an Italian-style union of the right, which would go from the center-right to the extreme right.
His decision comes the day after LR Prime Minister Michel Barnier announced the composition of his government, which includes several members of his former party, such as Senator Bruno Retailleau, appointed to the Interior, and LR Secretary General Annie Genervard to Agriculture.
“It will no longer be possible to work with those who are in Emmanuel Macron’s government,” he laments, stressing however that the president of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF) David Lisnard, the MEP François-Xavier Bellamy or Laurent Wauquiez “have not fallen into this grotesque caricature and this crude trap set by Emmanuel Macron.”
After his alliance with the RN, Mr Ciotti kept his constituency of Nice, but he has only managed to bring with him for the moment one LR deputy, Christelle d’Intorni, also in the Alpes-Maritimes.
This departure now opens the way to the designation of the new president of the Republicans, for which Laurent Wauquiez could run, according to internal sources.
The president of the group of 47 LR deputies in the Assembly, called La Droite républicaine (LR), has chosen not to participate in Mr. Barnier’s government after having refused the Ministry of Finance.
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