The national secretary of the French Communist Party was the guest of “8h30 franceinfo” this Friday.
“As long as he doesn’t clarify his position, I don’t see how” Jean-Luc Mélenchon “can continue to be a credible interlocutor”, said PCF national secretary Fabien Roussel on Friday, October 13, after the controversial remarks of the leader of La France insoumise on Hamas. For the boss of the communists, the leaders of LFI must “clarify their position”. “There can be no doubts, vagueness, serious breaches when there is news like the one that has just occurred”he judged.
>> Israel-Hamas war: Fabien Roussel “worried” about a “risk of conflagration”
“I am waiting for the leaders who refused to put into words what happened to speak out. It is up to them to clarify their position”he insisted. “To only qualify what Hamas did as a war crime is to confuse the Palestinian people with Hamas. As if Hamas was the liberation army of Palestine, of a country at war against another”declared the communist deputy.
The Nupes, a “coalition now outdated”
“I do not confuse Hamas with the Palestinian people. And in the same way I do not confuse the Israeli people with the far-right government led by Benjamin Netanyahu”he added. “As long as they have not done so, I do not see how we can continue to work together, because this discredits the fights we are waging for peace, for social progress, for the world of work”continued the boss of the PCF.
Fabien Roussel’s statements come at a time when rebellious France finds itself isolated within the Nupes because of its positions considered too ambiguous on the war between Hamas and Israel, and on its difficulties in clearly qualifying the Islamist movement as “terrorist”which constitutes “a fundamental rupture” to his eyes.
The opportunity for the communist leader to ensure that he “has been sounding the alarm for months” on the question of the future of the left alliance, highlighting the history between his party and the Insoumis. “I have been saying for months that we are at an impasse, that this coalition is now outdated, that it must be renewed”he warned. “I suffered unbearable insults, I was called a Nazi”he added, recalling the parallel made by LFI MP Sophia Chikirou who had compared him to the collaborationist Jacques Doriot, then relayed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
The leadership of the PCF is meeting this weekend to discuss its future within Nupes, said Fabien Roussel. “This is a discussion that we will have in the coming hours”he assured, while specifying his wish to “continue to work together on clear content, on a project”.