Jean-Luc Mélenchon asks the presidential camp and the right if they would censor a Castets government without LFI

“If you tell us no, we will say that the rebellious ministers are in fact a pretext, it is the program that you do not want,” added the LFI leader, while the presence of rebellious ministers in a government is a red line for the leaders of the presidential camp and the right.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon challenged the leaders of Emmanuel Macron’s camp and the right on Saturday August 24 on TF1, by asking them if they were prepared not to vote for the censure of a Castets government without an Insoumis MP, whose presence constitutes a red line for them.

“The government of Lucie Castets, if it does not [comporte] no rebellious minister, do you commit to not voting for censure and to allowing him to implement the program for which we came out on top in the legislative elections?” asked the leader of La France Insoumise, while the elected representatives of the former majority and the right affirmed that they would vote for a motion of censure if LFI elected representatives entered the government. “If you tell us no, we will say that the rebellious ministers are in fact a pretext, it is the program that you do not want”he added.

The option of supporting LFI without participation in government seems now on the table. At least that’s how the First Secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, understood it. “Jean-Luc Mélenchon opens the way to support without participation of La France Insoumise in a government of Lucie Castets. The pretext of the presence of LFI ministers no longer exists. We are now waiting for the response of all those who thought they had found there a way to reject the NFP en bloc”he reacted on X.

“Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s statement puts the Macron camp face to face with its responsibilities. The environmentalists are impatiently awaiting the response from the leaders of the Renaissance, Horizons and MoDem parties,” the head of the Ecologists-EELV, Marine Tondelier, commented to AFP. “We want to show that we are still in control. We are the ones asking the questions, not Macron.”explained for his part the deputy Hadrien Clouet, member of the rebellious leadership, to journalists.

Until now, in front of the press, the leaders of LFI rejected the hypothesis of non-participation in a government of Lucie Castets, arguing that this would not allow the senior civil servant to have more freedom. The latter, received Friday morning at the Elysée with eleven representatives of the New Popular Front, had maintained before Emmanuel Macron her desire to have ministers of LFI, the largest group of the NFP in the Assembly, in her government.