From our special correspondent in Bayeux
To discover
Presidential 2022: where are the candidates in the polls?
To each his own piece of the Cross of Lorraine. On this anniversary of the death of General de Gaulle, officials from one end of the political spectrum to the other have asserted, as every year, their more or less distended or recent affiliation with the leader of Free France. Since last year, Marine Le Pen is no longer an exception. But rather than queuing alongside the caciques Les Républicains at the grave of the great man in Colombey-les-Deux Églises, it is in Bayeux, in Calvados, that she chose to go on Tuesday.
"It's more symbolic and less morbid,"
slips his entourage.
The city is the site of two of the most emblematic speeches of the "great Charles": that of June 1944, where he will assert French sovereignty and independence after the Allied landings.
And that of June 46, where he will draw the outlines of what will become twelve years later the institutions of the Fifth Republic.
After having laid a wreath at the foot of the immense Cross of Lorraine which dominates Juno beach, where the General returned to national soil 77 years ago, the candidate supported by the National Gathering addressed a 15-minute speech on the city's Place Charles de Gaulle.
"The country's problems will not find their solutions in division"
“Defending France with passion, but also with reason, I believe that is what guides us and certainly what sets us apart,”
said Marine Le Pen. Quoting the General to better differentiate himself from the Republicans, accused in hollow
"of fighting France with reason without passion"
, and Eric Zemmour accused in hollow of
"fighting for her without reason but with passion."
To the essayist who never ceases to quote the general and proclaim himself as his only legitimate heir, Marine Le Pen opposes:
“The country's problems will not find their solutions in division, but in unity. Not in an inappropriate radicalism, but in the respect of the institutions and even of the conveniences. Not in a bias that is too ideological and therefore infinitely too brutal, but by calmly bringing together what Charles de Gaulle called the national instinct. "
Beyond differentiating itself from its adversaries, this claim of
“Gaullian”
filiation
will also have been the occasion for Marine Le Pen to repeat its institutional proposals which she wants to inscribe in the pure heritage of 1958: the return to a seven-year term but non-renewable, first of all, which
"will give the Head of State, guarantor of the continuity of public action, time to implement a high vision."
The recourse and the establishment of a citizens' initiative referendum, in order
"to respond to this need for 'citizen membership' of which the General made the cornerstone of the institutional edifice
".
Despite its very little Gaullist character, the member for Pas-de-Calais reiterated her wish to introduce proportional representation for legislative elections.
"It is the only voting system which now allows the adhesion of citizens,
defends the special advisor of Marine Le Pen, Philippe Olivier.
If General de Gaulle lived today, I am sure he would be in favor! ”
