The mayor of Orléans Serge Grouard leaves the LR party and denounces his “little political games”
“I have decided to leave Les Républicains, after more than forty years of membership in the Gaullist political family. In a press release published this Sunday, the mayor of Orléans Serge Grouard announced his departure from the LR on the sidelines tensions within his political familydivided on the issue of pension reform.
“In seeking to play the pivotal party in Parliament, a blow with the majority, a blow in the oppositionthey get lost in sterile little political games, worthy of the worst hours of the Fourth Republic, which General de Gaulle nevertheless fought so hard, ”regrets the former deputy for Loiret.
Last December, Serge Grouard was however still fully invested in his party, as a candidate for the presidency of LR on the occasion of the Congress. For lack of the number of sponsorship necessary after the resignation of Christian Jacob, he had observed the election of Eric Ciotti from afar. Four months later, “while France is doing badly”, the Republicans have, according to the elected official, “no longer any political line and no more projects for our country”.
Leave the Republicans to join the majority? Neither. Last summer, the current mayor of Orléans had pleaded for a “government agreement” with the presidential majority of Emmanuel Macron, without however mentioning any rapprochement. “We urgently need to build a new majority to avoid the worst. Later, it will be too late, ”he pleads this Sunday in his departure letter, without going into much more detail.
The symbol of the LR divisions
Without being a tenor of the right, Serge Grouard is nonetheless one of its oldest defenders. Member of the RPR, former deputy UMP then LR from 2002 to 2015, this former collaborator of Jacques Chirac was known to be an internal opponent of Nicolas Sarkozy, and rather close to François Fillon. He had Orléans, a real stronghold, of which he has held the position of mayor since 2001, with a break between 2015 and 2020.
However, it was after “forty years of membership in the Gaullist political family” in his words, that the former deputy took the door, without having tried everything. He recalls in his press release, having “proposed during the internal elections to LR, without success, a clear and clear government pact with the president of the Republic on the basis of four emergencies for France: environment and energy, security and immigration, health and hospital, debts and reform of the State”.
On the side of the Republicans, this departure is the symbol of internal divisions about the pension reform. Between the dissidence of Aurélien Pradié, the silence of Laurent Wauquiez then the disagreements of Xavier Bertrand, the party of Éric Ciotti risks weakening even more, while Bruno Retailleau largely participated in the vote on the text during its passage before the Senate. And it is in this context that a new vote is looming in the Assembly on the reform.
