Former Republicans senator Joelle Garriaud-Maylam: Ciotti’s alliance with far right ‘unforgivable’

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00:00Gérôme, thank you for being so patient, former Senator for Les Républicains,

00:05can we talk about the right of French politics tonight? Because those exit polls saying

00:10your party, that you represented in the Senate for a very long time, got just 10% of the vote

00:16tonight, Eric Ciotti off to join the far right, the national rally, how are you feeling? Does

00:22your party exist tonight? Well it exists, I mean first of all I'll remind you that there are two

00:28chambers in the Parliament and in the Senate, we have the majority, we have more than 100 senators,

00:36we have several big areas, big regions of France, we have big cities, so the party exists. It's

00:44true it has had a very bad run lately, in 2022 it was about the same number, the same percentage,

00:54but yes I'm extremely angry at Eric Ciotti, I had the opportunity to say it on many occasions

01:02and here in France 24 as well, because there's loyalty which is an extremely important aspect

01:09in politics, or it should be, and what is done to his party is not acceptable. Just to save a seat,

01:17this is unforgivable. He should at least have waited for the second run, but he was so afraid

01:23to lose his seat apparently. But if I may, isn't there an argument that Eric Ciotti went to the

01:29far right, to the national rally, because that's where your voters are? Unfortunately yes, we have

01:37our voters, many of our voters are extremely angry, like the rest of France, they're angry about the

01:43lack of security, they're angry about the inflation, they're angry because they have problems you know

01:50feeding the children for some of them, so there's a huge social circumstance which makes people

01:57angry, and that's why all of France, or a lot of France, turned towards the extreme right.

02:02But you know politically, historically, our party has always stood very strongly against the extremes,

02:11against the far right, and it has always been the case, and to see this kind of attitude is terrible.

02:18Yes I had been moving towards the extreme right, that's also one of the reasons why I decided to

02:24leave my party and not run again for the senate in last September, but we don't want an extreme right.

02:33But I should add something, there's also a problem, and a strong problem for us with the extreme left,

02:40because as you said Sandro, I mean when you have a political group which makes an alliance with an

02:50extreme left, I mean you've got to listen to what Mélenchon is saying, this is absolutely horrendous.

02:57I mean the kind of anti-semitism, you know the appeal of almost to violence, this is unacceptable,

03:04and that's why I've been very disappointed, because on the day after the European elections

03:09I was hoping that Raphael Glucksmann, who was newly elected for the socialist party,

03:15would unite and would launch this republican front to fight against the extreme from the left and

03:23from the right, and unfortunately that hasn't happened, and I think this is a terrible mistake,

03:30and we're paying the consequences now.

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