Towards a third candidacy for Philippe de Villiers in the presidential election? The former minister "does not envisage anything", but he "does not close any door," he said on RMC on Tuesday, before confirming his position in Le Figaro . At 71, "I am in good health and I do not want to die like a coward," insists the former president of the department of Vendée, already a candidate for the Élysée in 1995 (4.74% of the votes) and in 2007 (2.23%) in the colors of the Movement for France (MPF), his right-wing sovereignist party.
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Without an elective mandate since his departure from the European Parliament in 2014, the founder of Puy du Fou denied until Tuesday any presidential inclination, including in the "Talk Le Figaro ", last June 18. "I have more influence today on French political life than when I was in full activity," he was going to rejoice in the summer of 2018 with the Journal du Dimanche , convinced that he had helped convince Emmanuel Macron to abandon the construction of Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport.
"The country is falling apart"
Always influential within the conservative right, Philippe de Villiers "does not exclude (t) anything " for the future. “I don't even know where we will be (in 2022), at the pace things are going. The country is falling apart ... ” A concern relayed in his latest book, The refractory Gauls demand accountability from the New World (Fayard) . The book is a strong indictment against the management of the health crisis by the government, in which the sovereignist reaffirms his profession of faith: the need to " reaffirm the primacy of politics over economics " and to " adapt globalization to France ”.
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As for his vision of the presidential function, the Vendéen had delivered it to the Macron couple, when he came to Puy du Fou, in August 2016. "We should finally know how to speak to France about the intimate," he said. declared to the Minister of the Economy and his wife, according to his account of the detailed meeting at BFMTV. "The day the French feel a presidential candidate who will carry this quest, with the sincerity of his guts, this man will win. "