While the Socialist Party will elect its next first secretary on January 12 and 19, the three candidates showed their many disagreements live on television.
“Can we get out of this obsessive neurosis on Jean-Luc Mélenchon?”: the three candidates for the post of first secretary of the PS, Olivier Faure, Hélène Geoffroy and Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, posted their differences on the Nupes and the alliance with LFI, during a debate on franceinfo on Friday.
The first and second rounds of voting by socialist activists to appoint their new leader will take place on January 12 and 19, before a Congress at the end of January in Marseille.
“I am not the spokesperson for Jean-Luc Mélenchon”, “it’s not the LFI congress here”, cropped several times the outgoing First Secretary, Olivier Faure, fervent defender of the Nupes alliance, annoyed to be considered by its competitors as subject to the Insoumis.
He notably took the fly when his rival Hélène Geoffroy, mayor of Vaulx-en-Velin, assured that Jean-Luc Mélenchon had “theorized the contribution of the voices of the far right to overthrow the government” in the Assembly, implying that the Socialist deputies had let things go for a while.
“You can’t say what you’re saying there. To suggest that the socialists could have compromised with the far right”, replied Olivier Faure sharply, saying he was “attacked” and “angry”.
A “distressing” sight
The mayor of Rouen Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol judged this spectacle “distressing”, believing that “if we want to bring the left together, we should already think of coming together between socialists”.
“We have the right to confront each other”, replied Olivier Faure, who asked him not to “give a lesson” on the pretext that he would be “in the ‘at the same time'”.
Hélène Geoffroy repeated that she would suspend the participation of the PS in Nupes if she won the Congress.
“We are in essence a democratic party. This is not the case with LFI”, she said, believing that it was necessary “to pose the question of the union of the left again”.
For Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, the Nupes “is a useful framework in the National Assembly for the groups to talk to each other. But is that enough to win, no”, he estimated, pleading for “States principles of social and ecological transformation”.
“I didn’t understand anything,” retorted Olivier Faure. “I do not know if he is for or if he is against Nupes. (…) How can we announce States General of the left and refuse to be in the context in which it speaks?” , he wondered, saying he wanted a joint candidacy in 2027.
