For the first time, representatives of the Socialist Party (PS) and La France insoumise (LFI) will meet to discuss the issue of the legislative elections, according to information from franceinfo. This meeting will take place on Wednesday April 27 in the morning, three days after the re-election of Emmanuel Macron as President of the Republic. Until now, the two parties only communicated through the media, or exchanged text messages.
This meeting will take place at LFI HQ, in the 10th arrondissement of Paris. The Insoumis will notably be represented by MEP Manuel Bompard, former campaign director for Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the presidential election. Pierre Jouvet, national secretary of the PS in the elections, will be among those who came to defend the interests of the party.
“We first wanted to check if there was a will” on the side of the socialists, explains Manuel Bompard. Visibly reassured on this point, the Insoumis therefore want to get to the heart of the matter: the program. “I don’t want to tell you a story, for the moment, what we hear about pensions or about the Sixth Republic [chez les socialistes] does not suit us”assures the MEP.
Monday April 25 on franceinfo, Manuel Bompard had indeed posed as a preliminary to the discussions of the “programmatic clarifications” from the PS. “A programmatic signal” should therefore be addressed “in the coming hours”, Monday afternoon, said an internal party source. Objective: to address LFI activists and reaffirm that there are not two irreconcilable lefts, as former Prime Minister Manuel Valls once theorized.
This “signal” should also make it possible to ease the tensions between LFI and the PS, exacerbated during the presidential campaign, where the socialist candidate, Anne Hidalgo, did not hold back her blows against Jean-Luc Mélenchon. LFI is also negotiating with Europe Écologie-Les Verts (EELV), the French Communist Party (PCF) and the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA).