Republican leaders want to push Eric Ciotti out

Earthquake among the Republicans while Éric Ciotti announced his desire to form an alliance with the National Rally, some elected officials are calling for him to be dismissed, but it is not that simple.

Since Eric Ciotti announced his desire to form an alliance with the RN for the early legislative elections, many LR executives have immersed themselves in the statutes and nothing is really planned to dismiss the president, not even in the event of treason.

Treason, however, is what Éric Ciotti is accused of by his own since during his discussions, following the announcement of the dissolution of the National Assembly, with leaders like Bruno Retailleau, Laurent Wauquiez and Gérard Larcher, he did not speak of an alliance with the RN. “He lied to us” responds, injured, the boss of the Republican senators.

Others denounce the behavior “disgusting” of a man “isolated”. So far he has only convinced one MP to follow him and no one imagines more than five leavers embarking on the adventure. “He will send undersecretaries of young LR” jokes a leader. Éric Ciotti, however, seems indestructible.

A framework relied on the national council which “ensure the proper functioning of the movement”, except that there is no longer a president of the national council. Until January, it was Rachida Dati, but she has never been replaced since she entered the government.

Party number 2 Annie Genevard is organizing an exceptional political office on Wednesday afternoon, but will Éric Ciotti come? No one is sure, because normally he is the one who has to summon him. The idea of ​​his opponents is to organize a vote to show Eric Ciotti that he cannot stay, because “he decided alone, without prior consultation, this major political direction”, explains a manager.

Pressure, pressure, pressure, that’s what Eric Ciotti’s opponents are banking on. Tuesday June 11, just before the resounding announcement on TF1, Laurent Wauquiez told him that he was “a serious mistake” and that he “would publicly disavow”. His friends François Baroin and Christian Jacob also tried to dissuade Éric Ciotti from entering into an agreement with the RN, without success.

But since then, the pressures have multiplied between murderous declarations, the platform of the tenors LR, federations which rush to the stretchers, resignations of elected officials, or even collaborators who refuse to work for Éric Ciotti. For the moment, the president of the party is holding on, convinced of having the activists with him, but we must bear in mind that the right has already succeeded in pushing its leaders towards the exit. In 2019, Laurent Wauquiez was ousted, after the European elections. This was also the case for Jean-François Copé in 2014, mired in the Bygmalion affair and weakened by the UMP’s score in the European elections.

Except that after the 2024 Europeans, there are early legislative elections with candidacies which must be submitted before June 16. The investiture commission should meet this Wednesday, June 12, but Éric Ciotti no longer has a majority in this body. The president, one of his very close friends, Michèle Tabarot, is against his strategy and the commission should therefore nominate the LR candidates without taking into account what the party leader said. A frame slips with perfidy that “It’s possible that we won’t invest in Ciotti, so his deal with the RN is rubbish!”