on the right, Gérard Larcher wants a candidate “operational in early November”

INTERVIEW

Xavier Bertrand, Valérie Pécresse, Laurent Wauquiez, or Bruno Retailleau … On the right, we are jostling to be the candidate of his camp for the presidential election of 2022. But on the side of LR, which must hold a political office on July 6 , no designation method has yet been decided. Invited Thursday morning of Europe 1, the President of the Senate Gérard Larcher in any case pleaded for a candidate to be “operational in early November”.

The good performance of the Republicans in the regional elections “obliges us”, estimates Gérard Larcher. “In order for us to come out of the only alternative of a Macron-Le Pen duel, we need to have a single candidate and to form a team for France around him.”

LR still has to choose its method of appointing a candidate

Still, several obstacles still stand in the way of the presidential election. First, no method of designation has yet been chosen, while at LR, we are divided around the opportunity of a primary. “Jean Leonetti will make a certain number of proposals to us”, answers Gérard Larcher for whom the most important thing is to have “an operational candidate” at the beginning of November “.

After a political bureau on July 6, LR must meet in congress on September 30 to decide on a possible tie-breaking method.

“We are not a natural candidate because we decree it”

Second question: will all potential candidates agree to participate in a possible primary? Xavier Bertrand, widely re-elected in Hauts-de-France, and who left the party in 2017, has never hidden that he did not want to go through the primary box. “We must prepare for a tie-breaker procedure”, insists the guest from Europe 1, for whom “there is no natural candidate”. “We are not a natural candidate because we decree it,” he insists.

“I trust everyone’s sense of responsibility,” said Gérard Larcher, “convinced that we will be able to release this candidate”.