PARIS: France\u2019s Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, who has called for radical action to cut immigration numbers, easily won an election to become leader of the conservative Republican party (LR), according to results released Sunday.
\nRetailleau won 74 percent of the vote from party members against 25 percent for Laurent Wauquiez, the head of the party in the French national assembly.
\nAlthough LR and its allies hold only 60 seats in France\u2019s 577-member national assembly and the party candidate barely registered in the 2022 presidential vote, experts predict a better run in 2027 when President Emmanuel Macron must step down.
\nThe LR\u2019s last leader Eric Ciotti quit the party last year after calling for an alliance with the far-right National Rally (RN). The LR has wrangled since over its stance but has adopted a tougher line on issues such as immigration.
\nNational opinion polls currently suggest the RN would perform well in the 2027 election, which has however been shaken by legal woes for its figurehead Marine Le Pen.
\nRetailleau, in his government post since last year, has emerged as one of the most high-profile ministers in the centrist-led coalition government. He said he would stay in the government but he is likely to use his victory to press his case for the presidency.
\n\u201cOur political family is now able to carry our project forward for the presidential election,\u201d Retailleau told broadcaster TF1 after the results were announced.
\nThe LR is the successor of the UMP, which traces its origins to postwar leader Charles de Gaulle and was the party of former presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.
\nSome 80 percent of the 120,000 LR party members took part in the weekend vote for the leader. The LR membership had increased from 43,859 to 121,617 in the two months before the leadership election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS: France\u2019s Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, who has called for radical action to cut immigration numbers, easily won an election to become leader of the conservative Republican party (LR), according to results released Sunday. Retailleau won 74 percent of the vote from party members against 25 percent for Laurent Wauquiez, the head of the party …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":81183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81189,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81174\/revisions\/81189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}