Dated:
Right-winger Eric Ciotti has been elected as the next leader of France’s former heavyweight conservative Republican (LR) party after winning Sunday’s second-round vote of party members.
Ciottiwho is recorded as saying he wants to prevent what he calls a “migrant invasion” into France, won 53.7% of the vote against Bruno Retailleau, a senator with 46.3. %, said LR acting president Annie Genevard.
Although the LR and its predecessors ruled France for most of its postwar history, the country was squeezed between the centrists. President Emmanuel Macron on one side and the far-right national protest of Marine Le Pen on the other hand.
LR’s candidate in the presidential election in April, Valerie Pecresse, won only 4.78% of the vote. Ciotti, whose headquarters is in the Nice area, is politically more inclined to the right than outgoing LR leader Christian Jacob.
His program proposes to “restore the value of work, fight violence and disorder in the streets, stop the invasion of migrants and the rise of Islamism”.
He did not rule out voting for pension reform currently being prepared by the government.
(Reuters)
