The first voice is that of Emmanuel Macron, recently re-elected President of France. The second is that of Clémentine Autain, Deputy of the radical Left party La France Insoumise for Seine-Saint-Denis since 2017, member of the commission of Foreign Affairs in the National Assembly.

Macron:

President Emmanuel Macron, in attendance at this year’s recent Munich Conference, stated firmly that Russia must not win the war.

On the other hand . . . 

On the presidential plane home, he gave an interview to three journalists from Le Journal du Dimanche, Le Figaro, and FranceInter.  Le JDD summed up his major points in this way: “neither of the two camps can carry the day entirely and the Europeans will be the principal victims of a conflict without end.” 

Macron, it appears, still believes in a diplomatic solution that would have Putin across the table from Zelensky.  “I want the defeat of Russia in Ukraine,” he stated, “and I want Ukraine to be able to defend its position, but I’m convinced that in the end this won’t conclude [by military means].  I don’t think, as some do, that it’s necessary to defeat Russia completely, to attack her on her soil.  These observers want above all to destroy Russia.  That has never been the position of France and never will be.”  He was referring, said LeJDD, to the eastern members of the European Union and NATO, who were angry when he had said, back in June, “‘It is necessary not to humiliate Russia’–meaning that it is a matter of doing everything to bring Vladmir Putin to the negotiating table, once Ukraine, massively aided by the West, will be sufficiently in a position of strength to make its conditions.”  

He seemed to be using “humiliate” and “defeat,” and “Russia” and “Putin” interchangeably.  (An editorial in L’Express at the time suggested that this “humiliation” remark was the sort of thing he should have kept to himself, noting that it was “in reality playing the game of the Kremlin.”[1]

Macron also seemed to see no chance for a democratic solution, or a “regime change,” to emerge in Russia itself; Putin would likely continue in power, he added, noting that “all the options other than Vladimir Putin at the center of the current system seem worse.”  He seemed to be alluding to the head of the Wagner group, Evgeny Prigozhin, or Nikolai Patrouchev, chief of the Russian Security Council.  LeJDD again: “Macron thinks that Vladimir Putin, with all the faults we know about, [nevertheless] has the capacity to present as a victory what would in fact be a concession at the end of eventual negotiations, and that he could remain master of a state weakened, precarious, but stable.”  In other words, Putin could “sell” whatever the outcome might be, promoting whatever “victories” he might achieve–and the suggestion is that he would have to get something–as major accomplishments, worth all the blood and tears.

Macron, as if making excuses for Putin, then said that the allies had not always been so “clear in their intentions” in the expansion of NATO–which explained Putin’s speeches and actions since his 2007 “violently anti-Western” speech at that year’s Munich Conference.

Since Russia attacked Ukraine, those who are vaguely anti-Western and/or vaguely pro-Putin–the “yes, but” people–have relied on these central arguments:

• Putin was unquestionably to blame for starting this war, and is to be condemned for continuing it.  Words cannot be harsh enough.
• The war must stop.  It is too violent, too damaging to the people of both countries.  Both sides must get to the negotiating table.
• Russia’s legitimate security concerns–which, it is asserted, is all Russia ever wanted–must be taken into account.

Unfortunately, Macron is not just anyone; and his desire to be the “Putin whisperer,” his apparent inability to get off the phone–he and Putin had nineteen phone calls from December 2021, to March 29, 2022, and the twentieth in early May–was time-consuming and, in the end, deeply unsuccessful.[2] (Excerpts from one of these calls, made just before the war began, were recorded by filmmaker Guy Lagache, and were part of a film, titled Un président, l’Europe, et la Guerre, broadcast on June 30, 2022, on France2.) [3] There was another call on August 19, 2022, and according to the Elysée readout this one had a serious purpose, as Macron persuaded Putin to agree to sending IAEA experts to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which Russia had bombed.[4]

De Gaulle’s strategy of becoming a third force (through Europe) and a “mediator” during the Cold War has clearly influenced Macron’s determination, evidenced early in his first term, to be on better terms with Russia.  But also present is an extreme personalization of the conflict and an unconscious conflation of Russia with Putin.  The 70-year-old Putin will not be around forever; the Russian population, subject to the intense propaganda against Ukraine, will have to come to terms, eventually, with the brutality of this war carried out in their name; and the world will have to find a way to deal with this pathology. 

*******

Autain:

The other voice is that of Deputy Clémentine Autain. She comes from the generally anti-West, anti-US  La France Insoumise, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has called for France to align itself with emerging nations (BRICS, or Brazil, [Russia], India, China, South Africa–in other words, with those countries who are liberating themselves, both economically and politically, from Western hegemony).  In a recent editorial in Le Journal du Dimanche, Autain broke out of that position in a creative way that nevertheless preserved the essence of her party’s orientation against neoliberal globalization (to use a description made trite by overuse, but nevertheless accurate).

She began by dismissing the call for negotiations to end the war: “The appeal for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, which I myself brandished as a reflex, is at first thought seductive.  But let us be aware that, since the Crimean war in 1856, no war has been stopped by negotiations between the two parties who confront each other.  And especially, does one sincerely imagine a diplomatic face-to-face between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky?” 

She recommended two essential actions: helping the Ukrainians to hold the line militarily by supplying weapons; and increasing international pressure, without falling into a familiar “Russia against the West” pattern.  “To begin with, let us remember: [Putin’s act] is a violation of international law in the service of an imperialist and reactionary project.  We have not wanted to see it coming; since the annexation of the Crimea in 2014, since the brutal intervention in Syria, we should have taken Putin’s plans more seriously.  To affirm his political power inside Russia, the strong man of the Kremlin utilizes a fearful idea: to restore Russian power by surfing on nostalgia for Imperial Russia, based on xenophobia and heightened virility.”

But Kyiv held, and it was clear almost immediately that the Russian army had failed.  Putin had responded by “social terrorism,” including war crimes.  

His next stage, she predicted, would be to present himself to the “Global South” as a “victim” of the “Atlantic hegemon,” to invite those nations to join with him against imperialism.  The importance, for the west, she wrote, was to break out of the Cold War mentality and call upon Lula’s Brazil, the African Union, China (still “ambiguous” in its attitude), and others; and to come down hard on the side of the rule of international law and justice.

How we get to this point of effective pressure from outside the West is not clear; many hopes rested on President Lula of Brazil, who is still talking about negotiation.  (The Biden administration has tried to go in this direction.  Lula’s recent trip to Washington resulted in a joint statement about the shared “January 6” threat to democracy in both countries, and climate change, with not a word about the conflict; indeed, in an interview with CNN, Lula stated that “We need to find interlocutors who can sit with President Putin to show him the mistake he made to invade Ukraine’s territory, and we have to show Ukraine that they need to talk more so we can end this war.”  White House national security spokesman John Kirby said in response that the US government believed that “Mr. Lula’s view did not reflect the current state of the war.” [5]

But in addition to pointing to the need to break out of an East-West dichotomy, Autain also recognizes that the war is not just about Putin and his feelings.  Putin has created a sick society, cut off from information, mobilizing the population around xenophobia and grievance; how easy, then, to take on the role of victim–as indeed, he has already done.   The “exaggerated virility” (the accompaniment to increased attempts, in the United States especially, to control women’s bodies) has to be recognized as a part of this sickness; we’ve seen the same extreme gender role prescriptiveness in both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.  And finally, instead of arguing, as many still do, about what was said or not said in 1991 about the expansion of NATO, she recognizes this conflict for what it is: an exercise in imperialism.

=============================================

[1] Lalanne and Cyrille Pluyette, “‘Ne pas humilier la Russie’: pourquoi Macron aurait mieux fait de se taire,” L’Express, June 6, 2022.  https://www.lexpress.fr/monde/europe/ne-pas-humilier-la-russie-pourquoi-macron-aurait-mieux-fait-de-se-taire_2174742.html)

[2] Giorgio Leali, “Macron, Putin resume phone contact but remain far apart on Ukraine War,” Politico, May 3, 2022.  https://www.politico.eu/article/macron-putin-resume-phone-contact-but-remain-far-apart-on-ukraine-war/

[3] Ariane Chemin and Philippe Ricard, “Face à Vladimir Poutine, Emmanuel Macron manie la diplomatie des ‘fuites,’” Le Monde, June 30, 2022.  https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2022/06/30/face-a-vladimir-poutine-emmanuel-macron-manie-la-diplomatie-des-fuites_6132651_3210.html

[4] https://www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-macron/2022/08/19/telephone-conversation-with-the-president-of-the-russian-federation-mr-vladimir-putin (In English)

[5] Jack Nicas, “Brazil says it won’t be sending weapons to Ukraine, despite a U.S. push for more support for Kyiv,” The New York Times, Fabruary 10, 2023.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/world/europe/brazil-lula-weapons-ukraine.html. The White House read out: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/02/10/remarks-by-president-biden-and-president-lula-da-silva-of-brazil-before-bilateral-meeting/

The interview with Macron: François Clemenceau, “Emmanuel Macron sur l’Ukraine: ‘Écraser la Russie, cela n’a jamais été la position de la France,’” Le Journal du Dimanche, February 18, 2023.  https://www.lejdd.fr/international/emmanuel-macron-sur-lukraine-il-ne-faut-pas-ecraser-la-russie-132795?xtor=EPR-19-%5Bquotidienne%5D

Clémentine Autain’s editorial: “Tribune, Clémentine Autain: “Pour que Poutine abandonne sa guerre en Ukraine,” Le Journal du Dimanche, February 24, 2023.  https://www.lejdd.fr/international/tribune-clementine-autain-pour-que-poutine-abandonne-sa-guerre-en-ukraine-132947?at_creation=NL_Chez_Pol__2023-02-24&at_campaign=NL_Chez_Pol&at_email_type=acquisition&at_medium=email&actId=ebwp0YMB8s1_OGEGSsDRkNUcvuQDVN7a57ET3fWtrS_ZkZTnx4BH9A-oj-p5tnfc&actCampaignType=CAMPAIGN_MAIL&actSource=523109

Header Photo by Photo 62966326 © Belish | Dreamstime.com; Putin mugs on sale for tourists in St-Petersburg, 2015.

Andréa Kotarac, born in 1989, grew up in Haute Savoie in southern France, an area bordering both Switzerland and Italy.  His father was Serbian and his mother was Iranian.  He studied law and had been an activist for most of his adult life, starting in the Socialist Party, then moving to the Parti de gauche, then to Jean Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, founded in 2016.  His ties to Mélenchon put him on the list for the regional elections of  Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in the southeast, and he had won, in December 2015, becoming a member of the regional council.  He ran for the National Assembly in 2017, for the Rhône department, and lost in the first round.  In May, 2019, he announced on BFMTV that he was going to support the National Rally party list, led by current RN president Jordan Bardella, for the elections to the European parliament, rather than the LFI list led by Manon Aubry.  It was an open break with the party, after a long period of tension.  

In his appearance on television, Kotarac stated that the decisive issues for him had been “several events” at Yalta, where he had accepted Vladimir Putin’s invitation to the 5th economic summit at Yalta in May, 2019.  And his decision to leave the LFI, finally, was likely not voluntary.

These Yalta summits began in 2015, after Putin had seized Crimea from Ukraine in late 2014, an act that had brought a round of international economic sanctions against Russia.  Yalta had another meaning for Putin, as well, in reference to the Yalta meeting in February, 1945, among Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin, to shape the postwar world.  Putin has long made clear his ambitions for a “New Yalta,” a reshaping of collective security and regional influence, to reflect Russia’s (or Putin’s) ambitions.  

Numerous African leaders were at this 2019 conference, as well as European parties of the extreme right, including the AfD from Germany, the Vlaams Belang from Belgium, the FPO from Austria, though not Orbán of Hungary.  Marine Le Pen had been invited, but had declined; but Marion Maréchal Le Pen, her niece, had accepted, as had Thierry Mariani, who.headed the list for the regional elections in Paca in 2020 (and lost); Thierry was (and is) an MEP and leading RN member.

Questioned about his attendance, Kotarac stated that he was in disagreement with Mariani and Maréchal on many subjects, but agreed with them on two things: national sovereignty (to be interpreted as an anti-EU remark);  and the need to ally with Russia.  He attempted to refine the bluntness of those remarks, originally spoken to Le Monde, in a subsequent  interview with L’Obs, in which he reaffirmed his beliefs as a souverainiste, and noted that “Our [LFI] program evokes an altermondialiste alliance with BRICS to escape from the logic of the International Monetary Fund.  I remind certain leftists that the R of BRICS does not stand for Rungis but for Russia.”  (BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).  Mélenchon had often invoked these five nations as an alternative to the Atlantic alliance, and the neoliberal agenda of such agencies of the IMF, a position reminiscent of the non-aligned nations of the late 20th century.)  [1]

Arnaud Le Gall, who had drafted the LFI position on foreign policy, stated that the party was “not at all” in agreement with Marion Maréchal–the difference was that the “Front National” (as he called it) belief in national sovereignty was as an end in itself, while LFI believed in “popular sovereignty,” presumably a reference to their call for a “Sixth Republic” with power shifted to the elected Assembly, as well as an extensive use of the citizens’ referendum to decide major issues.  Further, the FN vision was identitaire, that is, a view of ethnic European nationalism and a support for French culture, as opposed to the LFI’s multicultural orientation.  In regard to Russia, Le Gall said, “We [the LFI] have never spoken of an alliance with Russia but of cooperation.  Words have meaning.  For us [LFI], Russia is neither an enemy nor an ally, but a potential partner.”  Le Gall went further in an interview with Sputnik News, in which he stated that he wished for a France “neither pro-Russia, nor pro-American, [but]  simply independent and which manages its interests on the European continent in partnership with Russia.”[2]

The LFI, in spite of a half-hearted call for neutrality, had tended to lean towards Russia.  In regard to the annexation of Crimea, they had called for the UN to organize an international conference to determine the border between Russia and Ukraine, adding that Russia’s annexation was “in reaction” to the US “maneuvers” in supporting the “so-called Ukrainian ‘revolution [in 2014]’” only because it served US purposes in its “aggressive extension of NATO” towards Russia’s borders.  (That argument would become a familiar one after Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022.)  Kotarac, who had appeared in March 2019 on Russia Today, two months before his Crimea trip, stated that Europeans should simply accept the fact “that Crimea belongs to Russia.”  LFI had made no public pronouncement after this excursion to Crimea, but “someone close to Jean-Luc Mélenchon” stated that “The movement sent no one to this forum and does not approve of this voyage. Andréa Kotarac does not define the international policy of the LFI,” adding, less formally, “he made a connerie.  We won’t take him back.”[3]

The Yalta Conference was not the first time Kotarac had embarrassed his party.  In May 2018, Kotarac (again surprising the LFI) had gone to Donbass, a region in eastern Ukraine led by pro-Russian separatists, who called it the Peoples’ Republic of Donetsk.  He had met president Alexandre Zakharchenco, killed in August in an explosion in Donetsk.  At that time, speaking on RT France [Russia Today, the Russian government-backed channel, recently shut down in France]–and speaking as a regional councilor of LFI–Kotarac expressed concern that this assassination, which Russia blamed on Ukraine, had killed a leader “loved by the people,” an act which would surely escalate the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.  Suggesting that “a not insignificant line had been crossed,” he noted that Zakharchenko was one of the signatories of the Minsk accords in 2015–accords that, he suggested, had not been respected.  He had added, finally, that Jean-Luc Mélenchon had frequently “sounded the alarm” on the Ukrainian question.[4]

Shortly after this, Andréa Kotarac was taken into the National Rally.  And he rose quickly.  He became the parliamentary assistant for Hervé Juvin, elected to the European Parliament  on Jordan Bardella’s RN list.  Juvin was an author, a contributor to the extreme right journal Élements, and an advisor to Marine Le Pen on matters of environmentalism (transformed, in RN politics, into anti-globalist localism).  Juvin and Kotarac had met on the stump for the Europeans, on the sacred ground of Hénin-Beaumont.   (Hénin-Beaumont, in Pas-de-Calais, was the site of the FN’s 2014 breakthrough into local elections in the north.)  On that occasion, after his public support for Bardella’s list, the personable Kotarac spoke, with one particularly memorable statement: “If my grandparents shed their blood against Nazism, they did not do it for the sake of écriture inclusive [inclusive writing] or communautarisme [sectarianism.]”[5]

Before the European parliament session and his duties with Juvin began, Kotarac was invited by two RN eurodeputies, Thierry Mariani and  Nicolas Bay, and Virginie Joron, head of the RN caucus in the Great East region of France, to a conference in Syria, described by Mariani as engaged in a courageous battle against Islamic terrorists.  Kotarac had a two hour interview with Bachar al-Assad, and stated, upon his return, that “Assad is in the process of winning the war against the Islamistes with [the help of] the Russians and the Iranians, and from this standpoint I feel closer to him than I do to [former Foreign Minister] Laurent Fabius.”  Once again Kotarac had gone on his own, without telling Juvin, who declined to comment.[6]

In the regional elections of 2021, the National Rally finally settled on Andrea Kotarac to head their list, the last regional list to be agreed upon.  (Kotarac had been a regional councilor for LFI from the 2015 elections, a position he had resigned after changing parties.)  The choice had not been uncontroversial.  Marine Le Pen was strongly in his favor as were the two mayors Steeve Briois (Hénin-Beaumont) and David Rachline (Fréjus) and the deputy Bruno Bilde, all of them part of Marine’s inner circle.  Others preferred Alexis Jolly, who was later chosen by the party for the National Assembly in 2022 (and won).  Some thought that Kotarac, in the party for barely a year, did not deserve to head up the regional lists.  There were also strategic concerns, because Lyon, the largest city in the region, had a strong Catholic voting bloc, who would not be sympathetic to Kotarac’s LFI past.  Marion Maréchal, representing this traditionalist wing of the Right, had founded her school, l’Issep, in Lyon, and some believed it would make more sense to play to that loyalty.[7]

By 2022, Andréa Kotarac was ready to be more blunt in his assessment of his former party, accusing the LFI and other parties on the Left for their “islamo-gauchisme.”[8] In April 2022, between the two rounds of the presidential election, he criticized the concession speech of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who had called for “not one vote for Mme Le Pen” in the second round.  He also noted the understandable exhaustion of voters who were tired of being called to “faire barrage” against Le Pen, adding that there was no longer any left or right, but simply “globalists and localists.”  Wisely, he did not fall prey to the Zemmourist temptation–also strongly pro-Russian–in the 2022 presidential elections.  He remains a member of the National Rally.[9]

Header image by Shutterstock.com

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[1] Nicolas Ruisseau. “A Yalta, en Crimée, la Russie réunit ses soutiens de tout bord,” Le Monde, April 20, 2019, https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/04/20/a-yalta-en-crimee-la-russie-reunit-ses-soutiens-de-tout-bord_5452904_3210.html; and Rémy Dodet, “La présence d’un élu dans un forum pro-Poutine embarrasse La France insoumise,” L’Obs, May 4, 2019.  https://www.nouvelobs.com/politique/20190504.OBS12462/la-presence-d-un-elu-insoumis-dans-un-forum-pro-poutine-embarasse-la-france-insoumise.html

[2] Mathieu Périsse, “La France insoumise recadre un élu lyonnais après son voyage en Crimée,” Mediacités, May 2, 2019.  https://www.mediacites.fr/enquete/lyon/2019/05/02/la-france-insoumise-recadre-un-elu-lyonnais-apres-son-voyage-en-crimee/

[3] Rémy Dodet, “La présence d’un élu dans un forum pro-Poutine embarrasse La France insoumise,” L’Obs, May 4, 2019.  https://www.nouvelobs.com/politique/20190504.OBS12462/la-presence-d-un-elu-insoumis-dans-un-forum-pro-poutine-embarasse-la-france-insoumise.html. The Ukraine Maidan revolution in February 2014 resulted in the ouster of a pro-Russian president and a return to the 2004 constitution.

[4] “Le meurtre de Zakharchenko entraîne le conflit ukrainien ‘vers  l’une des pires voies possibles,’” RT France, August 31, 2018.  https://francais.rt.com/international/53656-meurtre-zakharchenko-entraine-conflit-ukrainien-pire-voire. The Minsk Accords called for an immediate ceasefire, the decentralization of Ukraine with self-government for Donetsk and Luhansk, the removal of heavy weapons from “both sides,” among other things. It broke down almost immediately, with violations by both sides.

[5] Ivanne Trippenbach, “Andrea Kotarac devient assistant parlementaire européen du RN,” L’Opinion, September 2, 2019.  https://www.lopinion.fr/politique/andrea-kotarac-devient-assistant-parlementaire-europeen-du-rn  Inclusive writing in France is not limited to pronouns, but rather to correcting the non-inclusivity of male-only nouns and adjectives to describe mixed groups. See https://www.epfl.ch/schools/enac/about/diversity-office/inclusive-language/french-inclusive-language-gender/ for a quick primer.

[6] Ivanne Trippenbach, “Andrea Kotarac devient assistant parlementaire européen du RN,” L’Opinion, September 2, 2019.  https://www.lopinion.fr/politique/andrea-kotarac-devient-assistant-parlementaire-europeen-du-rn  The reference to Fabius, President François Hollande’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, refered to Fabius’ anger with President Barack Obama for refusing military action in 2013, even when Assad crossed “the red line” by gassing his people in 2013.  Celestine Bohlen, “A Turning Point for Syrian War, and U.S. Credibility,” The New York Times, February 22, 2016.

[7] Robin D’Angelo, “Régionales en Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes: le Rassemblement national choisit un ex-Insoumis dans la douleur,” Le Journal du Dimanche, March 9, 2021.https://www.lejdd.fr/Politique/regionales-en-auvergne-rhone-alpes-le-rassemblement-national-choisit-un-ex-insoumis-dans-la-douleur-4029789

[8] Ève Moulinier, “L’ex-Insoumis Andréa Kotarac, atout du RN pour le second tour?” Le Dauphiné, April 12, 2022.https://c.ledauphine.com/elections/2022/04/12/l-ex-insoumis-andrea-kotarac-atout-du-rn-pour-le-second-tour

[9]Ève Moulinier, “L’ex-Insoumis Andréa Kotarac, atout du RN pour le second tour?” Le Dauphiné, April 12, 2022.https://c.ledauphine.com/elections/2022/04/12/l-ex-insoumis-andrea-kotarac-atout-du-rn-pour-le-second-tour

Les Républicains, formerly one of the two dominant parties in France (the other was the rapidly shrinking Socialist party) was pulled together in 2002 from various strands of the Gaullist, sovereignist, neoliberal, and traditionally conservative and Catholic right.  At first designated as UMP (Union for a Popular Movement), Nicolas Sarkozy in 2015, as party president, renamed it Les Républicains.  The unified movement was the antidote to Leftist victories in what was believed to be a right-leaning electorate.  

And so it was.  For a few years.

The Right in France is now split again.  Les Républicains are hemmed in by the populist Le Pen party, the Rassemblement National, and the tiny Zemmourist party Reconquête on the extreme right; and by the Macron party, newly renamed Renaissance, which has absorbed much of the center Right.  With this configuration, Les Républicains are attempting to create some sort of middle lane to distinguish themselves from the parties on either side.  

The recent two-round election for the party President, which was concluded on December 10-11 by an online vote, has provided some clues about their likely route.  

The first round of the leadership contest featured three candidates.  

The winner, Éric Ciotti, on the far right of the party, is a member of the National Assembly as well as a  departmental councilor of Alpes-Maritimes, in the traditionally right-leaning region of the Riviera (PACA, or Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur).  He is 57.

Bruno Retailleau, age 62, is a senator from the Vendée department in western France, president of the LR caucus in the Senate and regional councilor of the Pays de la Loire region, of which he has also served as president.  

Aurélien Pradié, age 36, is a member of the National Assembly from the region Occitanie, in the southwest, where he is also a member of the Regional Council.

The one debate among the three took place on Monday, November 21, 2022.  Les Echos, a leading financial newspaper, believed that Retailleau had not withstood the attacks on him from the other two, largely because the LR in the Senate, under his leadership, has tended to side with Macron’s government; and because he did not give a clear answer as to whether he would run for president in 2027–a matter that would seem less than urgent, except that Ciotti wants to choose their presidential candidate next year, and he wants it to be his friend Laurent Wauquiez, former president of Les Républicains (2017-2019) and current president of the Aura Region (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes).  

All had something to say about the November crisis of the 234 clandestine migrants picked up by the Ocean Viking, an NGO rescue ship. The ship was refused entry into successive Italian ports before France finally allowed them to disembark in Toulon–a cause célèbre that provided many talking points for the Right.  Ciotti was the most uncompromising in the debate: “Giorgia Meloni was courageous and effective [in refusing entry], Emmanuel Macron was cowardly and impotent. . . The best way to save lives,” Ciotti  continued, “ is [to ensure] that no boat leaves the African coasts,” adding finally, “No taboos, no political correctness, . . . we react with authority.”  The other two instead offered proposals to modify the law–probably more practical, but also less striking .

On the matter of the ENR, the renewable energy program, Retailleau’s LRs in the Senate had voted for the government’s approach, which also includes the hotly contested policy of windmills, hated by those along the coast; both Pradié and Ciotti attacked him, with Ciotti asserting that “the only carbon free energy is nuclear power,” and with Retailleau reminding them that he written a book on the construction of “an ecology of the right.”

So much for all that.

The most interesting aspect of the contest was the challenge to the Old Guard mounted by Aurélien Pradié. In Pradié’s interview with Les Echos, asked whether he would choose Ciotti or Retailleau if he did not make it to the  second round (he didn’t), he suggested that it was time to “pass the torch.”  He himself, he suggested, did not want to “eternally replay the matches of yesterday and the day before yesterday,” but rather to “awaken” the right.  Who, he asked, would be facing Jordan Bardella (newly elected president of the Rassemblement nationale party), Mathilde Panot (leader of the LFI caucus of la France insoumise in the National Assembly) or some new face of the macronie?  He named no one from Macron’s group–in large part, one suspects, because Macron has not, to date, cultivated any successors.  Pradié, by running for the presidency of the party, made himself a national figure and showed his willingness to take on a leadership position.

The winner of the party contest, as expected, was Éric Ciotti, who had won 43% of the vote in the first round against his two other opponents, and won the second round with 53.7% of the vote.  The vote was online, from Saturday to Sunday at 8pm.  The voters were those who are formally members of Les Republicains, a total of 91,105, of whom nearly 70% voted.

Le Figaro noted that Ciotti’s predecessors as party president had been, most recently, Christian Jacob, Laurent Wauquiez, and Nicolas Sarkozy, who held the office after being defeated in his second run for the presidency.  Ciotti had been one of the stalwarts who had stayed with François Fillon to the bitter end in his 2017 presidential run.  (Fillon, once the frontrunner, was bedeviled by charges of misuse of public funds, for which he has since been convicted.) 

Ciotti is considered the farthest to the right in his party, and he had stated that if the second round of the presidential election came down to a choice between Macron and hard-right Éric Zemmour, “I prefer Zemmour.”  This had led Jean-François Copé (deputy from 2007-2017, one-time minister of the Budget, president of UMP from 2012-2014) to issue a warning about the risk of a “schism” in the party. Ciotti admitted, as well, that he had made an error in his handling of the Grégoire Fournas affair, the instance of a newly elected RN who had shouted “Go back to Africa!” at one of his fellow deputies as he discussed the Ocean Viking affair.

Ciotti believed he had erred not by excusing him, as one might guess, but rather by his “hasty” condemnation, leading Ciotti to sound, as some of his fellows on the right had suggested, like a member of  LFI.

Fournas, in his own defense, had said he was not denouncing the LFI deputy who was speaking, but rather the illegal migrants crossing the Mediterranean (though Fournas had said “he,” not “they.”) Stéphane Le Rudulier, Senator from Bouches-du-Rhône (Paca), seized upon this revision: “To say that illegal migrants should go back to where they came from, as Deputy Grégoire de Fournas expressed, is not racist.  If we no longer have the right to say that, then we can no longer have a migration policy.” Further complicating the issue of moderate v. extreme, Le Rudulier was the spokesman of Bruno Retailleau for his campaign for the LR presidency.  And MEP Nadine Morano, Ciotti’s political advisor in the campaign, described the sanction of Fournas as “a shame for democracy!”  LR Deputy Éric Pauget of Antibes had condemned Fournas’s outburst, but noted that he had since been “targeted” by online attacks, including those who invited him to bring the migrants to his own town.

This all may sound familiar, and Les Républicains may yet fail to carve out a separate pathway the RN, forcing their own moderates into Renaissance. But in terms of institutions, the French have two major strengths. First, their lack of an electoral college allows for a multiple-party system, which in turn allows the extremists to form their own parties, rather than forcing them into one of the two. Second, the French parties “invest” their candidates, and expel those who do not conform to party principles. And a third strength: all of the LR candidates were officeholders with a record–in other words, not Ronna McDaniel or the My Pillow guy.

All images from Shutterstock.com.

Sources:

Jacques Paugam, “LR: ce qu’il faut retenir du débat entre Ciotti, Retailleau et Pradié, Les Echos, November 22, 2022.  https://www.lesechos.fr/politique-societe/politique/lr-ce-quil-faut-retenir-du-debat-entre-ciotti-retailleau-et-pradie-1881321

Jacques Paugam, Stéphane Dupont, “Aurélien Pradié: ‘A droite, il faut cesser de faire du clientélisme politique,” Les Echos, November 15, 2022.  https://www.lesechos.fr/politique-societe/politique/aurelien-pradie-le-report-de-lage-de-la-retraite-cest-une-maniere-de-sacheter-du-courage-sur-le-dos-des-francais-1879212

 Emmanuel Galiero and Marion Mourgue, “Présidence LR: Éric Ciotti, la victoire d’un favori,” Le Figaro, December 11, 2022.  https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/eric-ciotti-elu-a-la-presidence-des-republicains-20221211

 Emmanuel Galiero, “L’affaire Fournas’ sème le trouble dans l’électorat LR,” Le Figaro, November 11, 2022.  https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/l-affaire-fournas-seme-le-trouble-dans-l-electorat-lr-20221107