Some pretzels placed on a varnished wooden table. On December 19, the mayor (LR) of Colmar (Haut-Rhin), Gilbert Meyer, published on Facebook two photos of him chatting at the town hall with Thierry Mariani, former Sarkozy minister elected MEP under the RN label last May and cantor of "the union of rights". Alongside them, the president of the RN group at the Grand Est regional council, Virginie Joron, as well as the RN regional councilor Marie-Hélène de Lacoste-Lareymondie. For several months, it has been preparing to conduct an RN list against the outgoing mayor at the municipal level. But Marine Le Pen's party assures him: there is no longer any question of a list in Colmar.
Visit of Mr. Thierry MARIANI, former Minister of Nicolas SARKOZY, current European Deputy, with the Regional Councilor for the Grand Est, Mrs. Marie-Hélène DE LACOSTE LAREYMONDIE - Tuesday, December 17, 2019
Gepostet von Gilbert Meyer Official am Donnerstag, 19. Dezember 2019From there to see a rapprochement between the mayor LR, in charge for twenty-five years, and the National Rally, there is only one step that many on the spot do not hesitate to take. "Gilbert Meyer fiddles with the far right, he is an old fox that rakes wide", chokes, on condition of anonymity, an important local elected official ... LR.
Discomfort in the municipal team
"There is no agreement, no alliance between us," replies Thierry Mariani, who immediately goes on: "The mayor has a good record. If he asked us, we would support him. But he didn't ask us… ”For his part, Gilbert Meyer refused to answer our questions. On December 23, he made a point, again on Facebook: “I am a republican elected official. I don't have to refuse the door to anyone. There was no agenda. "
Not enough to dissipate a certain discomfort even within its own municipal team. "I'm not in his head," cuts short one of the pillars of his campaign, which again asks for anonymity. "For me, this is a tacit agreement with the RN, you have to call a spade a spade, it's new and surprising," accuses Stéphanie Vuillemain, the LREM candidate in the Haut-Rhin prefecture.
"Convergence of ideas"
"We have decided not to present an RN list to Colmar from the end of October," says Virginie Joron. A position that is not new since the FN had not already presented a list to Colmar in previous municipal elections.
According to Joron's version, Gilbert Meyer should have gone to an aperitif debate between Mariani and RN members when he changed his mind and decided to invite the elected members of the RN to the town hall. A "political discussion", according to the RN, while the mayor evokes a "friendly contact between two former deputies who joined the National Assembly in 1993 and who were of the same majority".
“Gilbert was tricked, he did not know that there would be other RN elected officials with Mariani. Anyway, he does not need them to get re-elected, "defends an LR executive in the Grand Est. “No support, but you have to look beyond the municipal ones. We have convergences of interests and ideas, on laxity or on the fight against communitarianism ", assumes Virginie Joron. And the head of the RN in the Grand Est to propose: "Why not a second aperitif? "