World News: French Presidential Election Fringe, Extremes, and Identification

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Category: World News - Europe

Published on Monday, 06 December 2021 11:46

Written by Olivier Longhi

Invested candidate of the Republican party Valérie Pécresse, the president of the Île-de-France region, will have to deal with the most right-right tendencies of her party if she wishes to maintain her chances of victory in May 2022.

While refusing for the moment to compromise, she may nevertheless have to resolve to the temptation of identity to maintain the momentum she has built. By announcing that she wants to bring together all the political sensibilities of the French right, Pecresse, newly elected to represent the Republicans party in the next presidential election, is embarking on a balancing act that could easily push her to abandon one sensitivity more than another or even to turn against her.

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To paraphrase, without its talent, the title of René Rémond's book, Les droites en France, translated to Rights in France it seems obvious that between a liberal and republican right embodied by Valérie Pécresse and the identity and nationalist right of Eric Ciotti, followed by Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen, the French right will have a lot of trouble uniting behind one and the same person,   was she legitimately elected. (lemonde.fr: )

Different issues, different objectives, opposing discourses despite some ideological porosities, this is the portrait drawn up by the Republican's, torn apart by the need to bring together all sensitivities, without giving the image of a party in distress ready for anything, even if it means alienating voters or components who are incompatible with the esprit of the Republic.

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Discourse and Temptation

Caught in an ideological vice that will gradually close on her, imposing in fact a hardening of the original discourse made of signs of openness, the right-wing candidate knows that she will soon have to give in to the identity obligation desired by a part of the right. And that's the fault. Because if it knows it, others, its competitors internally and externally also know it.

If the former can use this weapon to push it to tilt its speech towards tendencies that it refutes half-word today, but for how long, its opponents out of the game will soon reproach it. This ideological dilemma, pecurate to the French right, has long been and still haunts the ranks of the Conservative Party.

The temptation of identity, seductive because easy, generous because it is quick to stir up the low passions and vile instincts of individuals in need of landmarks, first cousin of a sneaky and aggressive populism, remains a taboo in a part of the right while it is today more and more assumed by others.

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And this is also what risks weighing down the campaign of Valérie Pécresse, all euphoric at the idea of representing the right, she thinks united, namely this inability to assume this legacy to end up being overtaken by him to the point of losing control of his campaign.

Failure and Hostage

Nicolas Sarkozy had, during the 2012 campaign, tried to alienate the most right-right-going forces of his original party under the rule of Patrick Buisson. The failure of this tactic had materialized at the ballot box. But ten years later, the French political landscape has changed, radically changed, to give way to uninhibited political discourses due to the ideological desertion of the pillar parties of democracy and the Republic.

Invested as she is by an election with croquignolesque accents because she does not marry in any way the forms of primaries while endeavoring to defend the idea and the image, Valérie Pécresse now finds herself more hostage to political divisions with which she will have to deal than master of an electoral campaign of which she risks, if it is not already the case, to lose direction.

Trapped by Eric Ciotti, Eric Zemmour (lesechos.fr : ) and Marine Le Pen, anxious to defend the liberal republican image of the party without offending the electorate sensitive to the social progress of the center-right, the president of the Île-de-France region is today more of a puppet than a candidate able to win next May.

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Bio: Olivier Longhi has extensive experience in European history. A seasoned journalist with fifteen years of experience, he is currently professor of history and geography in the Toulouse region of France. He has held a variety of publishing positions, including Head of Agency and Chief of Publishing. A journalist, recognized blogger, editor, and editorial project manager, he has trained and managed editorial teams, worked as a journalist for various local radio stations, a press and publishing consultant, and a communications consultant.