Together citizens! It is the name of the “common house” of the majority, that the persons in charge of LREM will carry on the baptismal funds Monday November 29 in the evening. A meeting is organized at the Mutualité in Paris to present this new structure, the result of the association of the majority with the centrists of the Modem. The objective of Together citizens! is to re-elect Emmanuel Macron in the 2022 presidential election, and to give him a majority in the legislative elections that will follow.
This association of parties is above all the work of François Bayrou. The president of the MoDem has been carrying this idea of a “common house” for the center and the center-right for decades. He was recently joined by Richard Ferrand, the President of the National Assembly. In view of its position on the political spectrum and the circumstances of its creation, Together citizens! is a kind of offspring of the UDF, this party founded in view of the legislative elections of 1978 to support the outgoing president of the time, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
A “common house” could imply a single investiture in the legislative elections for the candidates of the different parties. But it promises to be very complicated because the majority intends to do it at the last moment, after the presidential election, and everyone also wants their share of the pie. Edouard Philippe with his new party Horizons wishes a large group in the Assembly, 60 to 80 deputies. For its part, the Modem of François Bayrou would see itself well with 80 deputies.
The Republic on the march has 260 outgoing deputies and, at each group meeting, the boss of the deputies On the march Christophe Castaner assures them that they will be reinvested. But this is impossible, given the number of seats available in the National Assembly. There is therefore a risk of clashes in certain territories such as in the Var for example. The mayor of Toulon Hubert Falco, recent defector of the Republicans, wants his deputies to be invested in his stronghold. Problem: there are already walkers on site.
Another stumbling block to which Together Citizens! must face: the lack of parity. Among the 14 people who carry this “common house”, there is only one woman: Marie Guévenoux, the very discreet number 2 of the Republic on the move, very close to Edouard Philippe. This disproportion was particularly visible on November 22, during a dinner which brought together the main executives of this new group. TO at Richard Ferrand’s table, there were almost only men.
The steering committee called upon to lead Together citizens! must however be equal, it will include four men and four women. But if the four men are already known – the two Prime Ministers, the current Jean Castex and the former Edouard Philippe, as well as the two builders of the party, François Bayrou and Richard Ferrand – it is not yet clear who the four women will be.