A month after the Marseille congress, which plunged the Socialist Party into crisis, deep disagreements remain between first secretary Olivier Faure and number 2 Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, determined to play his part.
It is the very ability of the party to return to combat in the midst of the battle against the pension reform that will be played out in the coming weeks.
While the PS meets for the first time its national council (CN) on March 11, the two components of the new leadership, which had clashed violently to take the head of the party, did not lower their arms.
“Roses have thorns, maybe tomorrow it will still sting a little,” warned Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol at the end of the Marseille congress, which gave victory to Olivier Faure, by a narrow majority.
The mayor of Rouen himself became first deputy secretary, at the end of a pact of collective governance and gathering of Socialists, concluded after several weeks of invective and accusations of fraud.
If he made the choice to return to the leadership, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol regularly displays his difference, not hesitating to criticize the management of the party. He also deplored, in a forum, the absence of a counter-project from the PS on pensions.
In the entourage of Olivier Faure, this attitude annoys: “Is his little notoriety, he exploits it to strengthen the PS or for personal ends?” Asks a socialist deputy.
“I have always been told that to seek media coverage, you have to hit your side: Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol applies this rule to the letter”, adds Senator Rémi Cardon. “The more we advance in time, the more I wonder about the desire for unity at Refondations”, the current of Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, adds the parliamentarian.
The fracture appeared even more gaping with the partial legislative in the 1st district of Ariège, scheduled for March 26 and April 2.
Olivier Faure calls for support, as last June, the outgoing LFI deputy Bénédicte Taurine, within the framework of the left alliance Nupes with La France insoumise, the communists and the ecologists.
Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol defends him, a dissident socialist candidate, Martine Froger, suspended from the party.
For the mayor of Rouen, who does not hide his hostility to LFI, there is no risk that the constituency will go to the right or to the far right. In this case, “socialists must support a socialist”.
“The Nupes agreement validated by the PS plans to support the outgoing”, argues for his part the entourage of Olivier Faure. And to recall that the Insoumis defended in a partial legislative Pas-de-Calais, a PS candidate, Bertrand Petit, yet ex-dissident.
The management has decided that, during the first national council on March 11, where the National Office and the national secretariat will be elected, the members will also vote on the legislative of Ariège. A way of displaying the balance of power: after the results of the elections of the first secretaries of federations, communicated on Friday, the current of Olivier Faure obtains 53.6% of the CN and Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol 28.5%.
The mayor of Vaulx-en-Velin, Hélène Geoffroy, unsuccessful candidate at the head of the PS on an anti-Nupes line, collected 17.5%.
“Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol signed an agreement during the Congress in which he undertakes to carry the common line resulting from the congress, therefore the line of Olivier Faure who is the majority, and the decisions resulting from the authorities. He will be bound by the vote of CN”, assures Christophe Clergeau, member of the outgoing management.
But in the camp of the mayor of Rouen, we deplore the “disastrous image” of the debates in the National Assembly on the pension reform project which “shows that a left dominated by La France insoumise is a dead end”.
Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol affirms that within the National Council, even “if legally there is a majority, politically it makes two relatively comparable blocks”, by adding his votes and those of Hélène Geoffroy.
For him, “the responsibility of the gathering is always up to the leader to carry it”. If Olivier Faure “bangs his fist on the table, he risks splitting more”.
In any case, the first secretary hardly dragged on Saturday to try to avoid new tensions within the party. He suspended Christiane Constant, who had just been elected head of the Rhône Federation and who was nevertheless defending her line. In question, a message “with a racist connotation” from Ms. Constant which could notably target Hélène Geoffroy, originally from Guadeloupe.
03/04/2023 19:22:04 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
