FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
The audience inside the packed 800-seat hall devoured it all, enjoying another strong turn from a charismatic provocateur who promises to restore France to its former glory.
One evening, French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau kicked off a campaign event with some politically incorrect jokes comparing his slim body to that of Senate President Gérard Larcher, who seemed to get the joke.
Then, moving on to the main points of the conservative discussion, the rising star and presidential candidate of France's center-right party, Les Républicains, criticized the wearing of headscarves by Muslim women as symbols of oppression and stressed the importance of defending the "great conquests of the West."
The audience inside the packed 800-seat hall devoured it all, enjoying another strong turn from a charismatic provocateur who promises to restore France to its former glory.
"What we believe in sometimes leads to controversy - and that's a good thing," Retailleau told the party's adoring loyalists.
The meeting in the wealthy Paris suburb of Vélizy-Villacoublay was a stop in Retailleau's election campaign to become the next leader of Les Républicains, the once dominant center-right party. The descendants of Charles de Gaulle are now in political purgatory after the election of Emmanuel Macron upended France's political landscape.
The vote to name the next leader on Saturday is open only to about 100,000 Les Républicains card-carrying members, but the electric atmosphere that night and during Retailleau's other campaign meetings is encouraging party insiders to dare to hope that they have finally found someone who can challenge the National Rally's Marine Le Pen, who aims to become the most powerful right-wing politician in France - and, potentially, win the presidency.
"We haven't seen this much enthusiasm since former President Nicolas Sarkozy," said a campaign official, who was offered anonymity due to internal campaign protocol.
With the next presidential election in France less than two years away, Les Républicains is dreaming of a return to power behind a candidate who combines economic liberalism with an anti-immigration policy that approaches that of the far-right National Rally, but without the legal or historical baggage of Le Pen.
For now, Retailleau seems to be the man, poised to take advantage of France's and Europe's shift to the right. But he is an enigmatic figure. The 64-year-old devout Catholic has spent years in the political backbenches, but on stage he emerges as a fiery culture warrior.
It's no surprise that he has a background in acting. Before we imagine Retailleau amidst the gilded interiors of the Élysée, we need to take a trip back to a ruined castle more than 300 kilometers southwest of Paris to understand how he developed his political identity - and learned a thing or two about the dark arts of showmanship.
When Retailleau was just an enthusiastic teenager, he volunteered to take part in a play that was being staged in the small town of Les Epesses, a few kilometers from his hometown.
The production was organized in 1978 by a 27-year-old named Philippe de Villiers, a scion of one of the aristocratic families that survived the French Revolution. Tall and with a distinctively theatrical way of speaking, de Villiers was a civil servant at the time for the eastern region of Vendée.
Authorities there had bought a crumbling castle in Les Epesses a year earlier with the hope of turning it into a small museum.
But de Villiers dreamed of something bigger.
He wanted to create a form of entertainment that recalled the Vendée's fierce counter-revolutionary history and deep Catholic heritage. He began by organizing a Disney-esque spectacle filled with royal nostalgia - complete with fog machines and sword fights - called "Cinéscénie", and it was an immediate success.
Local news at the time said a crowd of 30,000 people flocked to Les Epesses to watch the first show. Young people signed up en masse to volunteer, with hundreds taking part - including Retailleau, who served as one of the show's 20 knights dressed in medieval costume.
Cinéscénie was such a success that by 1989 — a few years before Disneyland Paris opened — de Villiers inaugurated a medieval theme park to accompany the show, named after the castle, Puy du Fou. It now attracts millions of visitors each year and ranks among the most visited theme parks in Europe.
Volunteering at the park was a formative experience for Retailleau. De Villiers took a special interest in the current interior minister, who was more than 10 years his junior, and became a kind of mentor to him.
The two complemented each other well. Retailleau had a simple, understated beauty (or so it seemed) that didn't seem to overwhelm the bombastic de Villiers.
The pair would go on to forge a decades-long professional, political, and personal bond that would lead them to some of the highest positions in French politics.
De Villiers used the success of Cinéscénie to take a role as France's deputy culture minister in 1986, and Retailleau followed him into politics two years later when he won a seat on the Vendée council. The press at the time called him "Philippe de Villiers' man".
Një vit më vonë, në vitin 1989, Retailleau u bë kryetar i parkut tematik Puy du Fou.
Duke pritur sinjalin e tij
Për vite me radhë, de Villiers dhe Retailleau punuan mirë së bashku duke drejtuar Lëvizjen për Francën, një parti e vogël por e zëshme që mbështeste sovranitetin kombëtar dhe euroskepticizmin, si dhe nxirrte jashtë ligjit imigracionin dhe martesën e personave të të njëjtit seks gjatë dy kandidimeve të dështuara presidenciale të de Villiers në vitet 1995 dhe 2007.
Megjithatë, ambicia e shkatërroi lidhjen e tyre.
Në vitin 2009, kryeministri i atëhershëm François Fillon, një anëtar i Les Républicains, po e vëzhgonte Retailleau - një senator francez në atë kohë - për një ministri të re. Por de Villiers, i cili mezi kishte marrë 2 përqind të votave në një fushatë presidenciale katastrofike dy vjet më parë, nuk mundi ta duronte suksesin e të mbrojturit të tij. De Villiers e kundërshtoi me forcë emërimin dhe Fillon u tërhoq për të shmangur, sipas fjalëve të tij , një "luftë bërthamore" me një aleat të rëndësishëm politik.
Ajo që pasoi ishte një përplasje publike. De Villiers e shkarkoi Retailleau nga detyra e kryetarit të Puy du Fou. Retailleau braktisi Lëvizjen për Francën menjëherë pas kësaj, duke përmendur dallime strategjike, dhe iu bashkua Les Républicains në vitin 2011 — duke shërbyer përfundimisht si një lojtar kyç i Fillon në përpjekjen e tij të dështuar për zgjedhjet presidenciale të vitit 2017.
Për Patrick Louis, një ish-anëtar i Parlamentit Europian dhe sekretar i përgjithshëm i Lëvizjes për Francën, i cili i ka mbetur besnik i palëkundur i de Villiers, ndryshimi i partisë nga Retailleau nuk do të thoshte se edhe bindjet e tij kishin ndryshuar.
“Pika më e fortë e Retailleau është se ai udhëhiqet nga një filozofi politike”, tha Louis, duke shtuar “unë ende besoj se ai ndan të njëjtën mendësi me ne - ne mbështesim sipërmarrjen e lirë, por ne jemi konservatorë që mendojmë se shoqëria duhet të qëndrojë e rrënjosur në traditat e saj dhe cilësia kulturore duhet të ruhet.”
Koha do të rezultonte e favorshme. Edhe pse Sarkozi po i afrohej fundit të mandatit të tij të parë, ai i kishte zhvendosur Les Républicains në të djathtë nga koha e Presidentit Jacques Chirac dhe po nxiste atë që më vonë do të përshkruhej si një "e djathtë e pandjeshme".
Megjithatë, Les Républicains në dekadën që pasoi do të humbiste peshën dhe shumë nga votuesit e saj të moderuar u përthithën nga platforma pro-biznes e Macron dhe anëtarët më të djathtë të lëvizjes u “rrëmbyen” nga Le Pen dhe Tubimi Kombëtar.
Retailleau priti me durim, duke u shfaqur rregullisht në media në një përpjekje për të fituar njohje përtej qarqeve politike franceze.
Things began to improve suddenly last summer, when Les Républicains made a somewhat miraculous return to government after snap elections produced a fragmented parliament. The conservatives reached a deal with Macron’s camp to form a coalition and block the surprise winner of the vote, the left-wing New Popular Front, from taking power.
Macron appointed Brexit negotiator and conservative doyen Michel Barnier as prime minister in September, who in turn appointed Retailleau as interior minister.
Retailleau's call to ban Islamic headscarves in athletics and to reconsider the right to citizenship by birth, as well as his comments that "there were also happy times" in France's centuries-old colonization of Africa, have made him the subject of headlines.
This strategy is not without risks: Retailleau was criticized for being slow in his response when a Muslim man was fatally stabbed in a mosque in France last month, drawing criticism even from within his own camp.
Retailleau is widely expected to win the Les Républicains leadership race and take the party deeper into right-wing territory on issues of immigration and the culture war. However, the National Rally says it does not see him as a threat when it comes to the race for the Élysée. /Adapted from Politico/
Lini një Përgjigje