Gérard Larcher wonders about “legitimacy” of Emmanuel Macron in case of re-election without campaign

“If there is no campaign, the question of the legitimacy of the winner will arise,” said the President the Senate Republicans in an interview at the “Figaro”.

Le Monde

Once Emmanuel Macron has not debated. Monday, March 14 from 8:30 pm on TF1, eight candidates have succeeded a great oral on the war in Ukraine. As the President of the Republic refuses any direct confrontation before the first round, they did not oppose their ideas during a debate. In an interview with FIGARO published on Tuesday, March 15, Gérard Larcher, the Senate Republicans (LR) deplored the strategy of President Candidate, accused of wanting to “span the presidential”.

m. Larcher launches: “The President of the Republic wants to be re-elected without having been actually candidate, without campaign, without debate, without confrontation of ideas. All candidates debate except him. It’s a paradox!”

He claims, in particular, about Emmanuel Macron, to “be in the lead in the polls is not a sufficient reason for the election and consider that the ballot is only a formality, would -to only respect for democracy “.

If he recognizes that, in the face of the war in Ukraine, “there can not be another reaction than the national and European unity”, this support from Valérie Pécresse still takes care of the fact. that “the democratic appointment [of the presidential election] can not be obscured”. “If there is no campaign, the question of the legitimacy of the winner will arise,” he continues.

While no president of the outgoing Republic has agreed to debate before the first round with his competitors, including Nicolas Sarkozy, he retorts: “But were we in the same situation as today? when a call for the country’s unity is impossible, it is impossible to muzzle the democratic debate. It is important, on the contrary, to find a balance and the rules. “In an interview granted the 1 / SUP> March in Europe 1, Mr. Larcher was holding the same alert speech. “If there is no debate, if there is no balance sheet, project, imagine the President of the Re-elected Republic, then it will be in a form of democratic debate omission, with a risk “On the” legitimacy during the mandate “, warned the LR President of the Senate.

The executive is reassuring

“We do everything for a campaign,” reacted the government spokesperson, Gabriel Attal, on France 2, recalling that Emmanuel Macron must present Thursday at a press conference ” Three hours “his project for a second five-year.

“When he can”, the head of state “participates in this campaign”, “he said,” But I do not hear from French asking him to desert his duties President at a time when, we see in the news, obviously we need a president who continues to act and protect the French “. Julien Denormandie, the Minister of Agriculture and the President of the President’s campaign, is also mounted in the niche. He denounced at the Micro of France Inter in the morning of the “irresponsible remarks” of the President of the Senate, arguing that the latter, “guarantor of our democracy”, makes “run a small music that would be an illegitimacy trial in the case where the President of the current Republic would be re-elected, on the grounds that the campaign would not have been sufficiently done “.

In Europe 1, Marlène Schiappa also dismissed the idea of ​​a president refusing to truly enter the arena. “The President of the Republic is far from the debate,” she argued, before proceeding, “It’s been a year since Marine Le Pen, that the Republicans party, that others, the Socialist Party, are in the campaign for the presidential election. (…) Everyone is free to do his campaign and it seems to me that Valérie Pécresse held meetings (…) who have been rebroadcast live, along, broadly and across the whole Information channels, and it’s normal, like other candidates. (…) So, I do not feel that anyone is private campaign. “

/Media reports.