Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign in the Bouches-du-Rhône – The World

Le Monde | 05/03/2015 at 10:43 p.m. • Updated 03/06/2015 at 0:27 | By Matthew Goar

A walkabout and some selfies to the output of a restaurant lunch with elected officials, meeting with French around a specific theme and a meeting in a room heated to white … Two weeks departmental elections, Nicolas Sarkozy mechanical begins to grind. After winding roads of Burgundy to meet the farmers, February 18, the president of the UMP, visited the Bouches-du-Rhône, Thursday, March 5, to discuss housing. But especially to mobilize voters when approaching an important deadline on the long road that must lead to the primary in 2016.

And the country air seems invigorating. “This is a rejuvenation … But this is not my first campaign,” , he says, compressed between journalists and people in Salon-de-Provence, one that begs to be represent for president. “So there will be another so …” , says the president of the UMP before spinning evoke “housing development fell to three hundred thousand a year” and the “ weight standards that fact that we built 15% more expensive and three times longer than in Germany” .

L’Elysee, a deadline too far

The Elysee? The deadline is too far away, even in the morning while shaving. Time is the collective success. For Nicolas Sarkozy knows that his fate is linked to that of his party, he wanted to become the figurehead. The former president often say in private: the departmental elections in 2015 are the first step in the long conquest of power. And he must be the guarantor of the unity of the family when others have more personal playing cards. “We will explain at the time of the primary. Before 2017, there was 2015 and then there was 2016 “, has he estimated to Marseille Jean-Claude Gaudin, mayor of the city, at a public meeting at the Palais des Congress Park Chanot, where fifteen hundred people gathered.

And the approach of these departmental elections, the former head of state knows he has to fight on two fronts : be the first opponent Francois Hollande and contain far-right vote, particularly in this department where the FN Stéphane Ravier conquered in 2014 Hall of 7 ^th sector before becoming a senator of the department . “The only alternative capacity to mad policy of the Socialist Party, it is we who embody. (…) It’s not about moral lessons, ideology, these specific facts, relentless. If you vote for our candidates, you will have the candidate of alternation, if you vote for the candidate of the FN, you will have the continuation of the socialist policies “, launched Mr. Sarkozy, repeating again the expression “FNPS” to Martine Vassal, at the vanguard of candidates UMP-UDI, which will face Jean-Noel Guerini, outgoing and outgoing president of the PS, in a third round where any elected Frontists cou ld weigh heavy.

Porosity electorates FN and UMP

As he did during his interview with BBC Monday, Sarkozy continues to unfold anti-FN campaign by calling useful vote. Candidates UMP-UDI could indeed end up in duel with extreme right candidates in six hundred to seven hundred townships during second rounds, the two thousand and fifty-four this election. And the entourage of the president of the party is concerned about the porosity between the two constituencies, including an investigation Odoxa for the Paris , which stated, in mid-February that 42% of voters Nicolas Sarkozy surveyed would vote for the FN in a local election.

The president of the UMP believes his reconstruction of the UMP will stem the leak. “Without unity, we are inaudible. (…) Here, you have gone beyond the ambition quarrels. For France, it is similar. Put yourself in the place of those voters exasperated by the PS and who saw us divisive politics, they have not been to the choice of the heart, they were towards the choice of wrath “ is analyzed Mr Sarkozy, who sees himself as the convener of the right before rolling some of his favorite themes since autumn: the control of migration, assimilation, fiscal convergence with Germany and the indictment against a François Hollande, “arbitrator sects PS” . “By lying as he did, Mr. Holland has sown anger. I do not want that anger sow violence in our country “, said Mr Sarkozy, who will step up his campaign. Next week, he will make two trips, and his team is working on a rally in Corrèze, home of the President of the Republic, during the period between the two rounds.