PARIS (dpa-AFX) – In the election of a new leader of the conservative French party Les Républicains, none of the three candidates achieved the necessary absolute majority. The party will therefore hold a runoff election next weekend, as interim chairwoman Annie Genevard said on Sunday evening. In the run-off election, MP Éric Ciotti from the right wing and the somewhat more moderate Senator Bruno Retailleau face each other.
Ciotti was traded as the favorite before the first round of voting and ended up in first place with 42.73 percent of the votes. Retailleau reached 34.45 percent. Secretary-General Aurélien Pradié, a representative of those Conservatives who are increasingly concerned about social issues, dropped out with 22.29 percent of the vote. From Saturday evening on, around 91,000 party members were called to vote for 24 hours.
For the Conservatives, the vote is about finding a clearer substantive line with a new leader after the electoral flops of recent years and gaining a political foothold again. For the center government under President Emmanuel Macron, the crucial question is whether the new party leadership will be willing to cooperate with her. The result of the first round is likely to cloud the prospects, because Pradié was still the most positive about a cooperation. Because Macron’s Liberals lost an absolute majority in the lower house in June’s parliamentary elections, they are dependent on opposition votes in the chamber./rbo/DP/he