He probably wasn’t expecting it. Sunday April 3, at the meeting of Valérie Pécresse at the Porte de Versailles, Nicolas Sarkozy was booed by part of the room. Since then, at each of her media releases, Valérie Pécresse has worked to mitigate the event. This Tuesday, the candidate of the right and the center repeated again that “it was not wanted at all”, blaming these whistles on the “sadness” right-wing voters to see Nicolas Sarkozy not supporting their candidate.
But beyond these media remarks, there has been no direct exchange since Sunday between Valérie Pécresse and Nicolas Sarkozy. Or more exactly: Valérie Pécresse tried to reach the former president. “She didn’t get it” we are told. She spoke to a Sarkozy collaborator. Who did not consider it useful to call her back. And among the Sarkozyists who support Valérie Pécresse, it is an understatement to say that a malaise has set in.
One of them, when asked if he is responsible for putting binder between the two: “They’re big enough, she’s been his minister twice, it’s up to her to handle it live.” A former minister assures that “at the beginning, Pécresse thought of doing without him. She had him summoned by her henchmen. This is not how you treat a former head of state!”
It should be remembered that the Sarkozyists gave impetus to the candidacy of Valérie Pécresse during the internal congress on the right, when at the end of October, three relatives of the former head of state – Brice Hortefeux, the senator Pierre Charon, and the ex-police boss Frédéric Péchenard – took a stand for the president of the Ile-de-France region, to block the road to the presidential election for Xavier Bertrand.
Awkward silence in the ranks today… Just one of them confirms that for Nicolas Sarkozy, it is now impossible to say a word in favor of Valérie Pécresse.
Will Nicolas Sarkozy speak afterwards? When will the construction site for the reconstruction of the right begin? His relatives say no. “If he doesn’t return to political life now, he won’t after” slips an elected official who knows him well. “I don’t feel him wanting to get into the fray now” confides another who has seen it recently.