The former president of the LREM (La République en Marche) group in the National Assembly, Gilles Le Gendre, officially announced on Tuesday that he was withdrawing his candidacy for the second round of the legislative elections in Paris.
Running in the 2nd constituency of the capital against Marine Rosset (NFP) and Jean Laussucq (Renaissance), the dissident candidate of the Renaissance group came in third place in the first round, obtaining 19.62% of the votes. Facing him, Marine Rosset came in first with 33.4% of the votes while Jean Laussucq came second, with 23.62%.
The majority had announced during the month of June that it would invest Jean Laussucq, LR advisor of Paris and close to Rachida Dati, thus preferring “circumstantial rallies to an early supporter of Emmanuel Macron”, in the words of Gilles Le Gendre, who had had to resolve to run without a label.
The “choice of the person”
“The maneuver was therefore successful. I draw the consequence by withdrawing my candidacy,” stated the elected official in a press release, noting that he does not wish to appear as “another cause of confusion.”
Although Gilles Legendre does not encourage the inhabitants of his constituency to vote for one or other of the candidates still in the running to become a member of parliament, the former member of Renaissance nevertheless makes his personal choice known and indicates that he is siding with the other political side, by giving his vote to his left-wing opponent, Marine Rosset.
“Jean Laussucq will not have my vote. Ms. Dati’s candidate must assume the discredit of the political figure of whom he is the creature and whose recent appointment to the government represented a betrayal of the ideals of political ethics and the promises of renewal of political practices carried by Emmanuel Macron in 2017,” justified Gilles Legendre.
He specifies that he is making the “choice of the person” here, going beyond the political label of the socialist candidate Marine Rosset, to whom he attributes an “attachment to democratic, republican and universalist values”. However, he takes advantage of his open letter to condemn the NFP, which he describes as an “unnatural alliance between the left-wing parties that are intransigent defenders of the Republic and La France Insoumise, which continues to undermine its foundations”.
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