As the Communist Party congress opened on Friday, its national secretary, Fabien Roussel, pleaded for “a new union” on the left. An outing that did not please the national coordinator of La France insoumise, Manuel Bompard.
Frying on the line. The boss of the French Communist Party (PCF), Fabien Roussel, has drawn the wrath of several pillars of La France insoumise (LFI) in recent days. In question, his release in early April on the Nupes, the left alliance born in 2022, which he judged “exceeded”. Another point of contention for these “rebellious” executives: the leader of the Communists reached out to former Socialist Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, reviled by LFI and Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV) for his positions deemed authoritarian. Franceinfo explains to you the deep reasons for the quarrel between the PCF and the movement of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which does not date from yesterday.
The “rebellious” skeptics about the “new union” on the left wanted by Fabien Roussel
The boss of the PCF has never hidden his skepticism vis-à-vis the Nupes, the alliance set up under the leadership of Jean-Luc Mélenchon after the presidential election. But he has expressed it more clearly in recent days, ahead of the 39th party congress which opened on Friday April 7 in Marseilles, and at the end of which he should be largely confirmed at the head of the party. There “Nupes is outdated”thus released Fabien Roussel, in an interview with The Express Monday April 3.
Asked about his desire to extend the union of the left to Bernard Cazeneuve, who left the PS denouncing the “toutouisation” socialists by La France insoumise, Fabien Roussel replied: “Yes! We must speak to the entire left. It is unimaginable to exclude anyone if one wants to embody a force of progress capable of winning.” The former Prime Minister was quick to welcome these remarks, believing that it was necessary to rebuild a “left of responsibility and credibility”. Within the party, on the other hand, the idea is not unanimous, as evidenced by a forum in The world of PCF executives judging “irresponsible to throw out the Nupes with the bathwater”.
In a letter to PCF membersthe coordinator of La France insoumise, Manuel Bompard, asked “clarifications” after the declarations of Fabien Roussel. “Is his desire to break with the Nupes the position of the French Communist Party now?”, he wondered. “Mind your own business”replied the national secretary of the PCF, at the opening of the congress on Friday. Guest of TF1’s “13 Hours” on Saturday, the boss of the Communists again pleaded for a “new popular front with everyone, and not just the political forces within Nupes”.
After meeting Fabien Roussel on the sidelines of the congress on Saturday, Manuel Bompard tried to calm things down by saying that he didn’t have “no intention of getting angry” with his PCF counterpart.
The PCF claims its autonomy on major issues
“No one will dictate to communists what they must vote, do and choose. We are sovereign, free, communists”, hammered Fabien Roussel in Marseille on Friday. The next day on TF1, he again claimed a PCF “free and autonomous” and stressed the importance of “to respect the choices of the French Communist Party, its way of being in the Assembly or in the Senate”.
In fact, the PCF has marked its difference on the left, on many subjects in recent months. If the “rebellious” did not take part in the vote, the communist group in the National Assembly is thus the only one to have voted against the recognition of the Holodomorthis famine caused at the beginning of the 1930s in Ukraine by the Soviet authorities, and at the origin of the death of several million people.
Fabien Roussel also severely criticized the parliamentary strategy of the “rebellious” on the pension file. The LFI deputies notably maintained their amendments until the end of the time dedicated to examining the text, preventing article 7, which postponed the legal retirement age, from being examined. Likewise, he considers that nuclear power is a “sector of the future”while EELV and LFI want to get out of it as soon as possible.
Finally, on the issue of work, Fabien Roussel has drawn the wrath of his partners, castigating in September “the left of the allocs”. After this exit, the deputy LFI Eric Coquerel had reproached the communist leader for “legitimize all the discourse of the right and the extreme right”.
The 2022 presidential candidacy, a “treason” never digested by LFI
In reality, the differences between Fabien Roussel and his allies on the left are not new. In 2018, at the 38th PCF congress in Ivry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne), Fabien Roussel was elected against outgoing national secretary Pierre Laurent on a line hostile to a single candidacy of Jean-Luc Mélenchon for the presidential election. , as was the case in 2012 and 2017, recalls Le Figaro.
Fabien Roussel’s candidacy in 2022 was very badly received by LFI, which accuses him of having cost his candidate qualification in the second round. For the record, the communist had garnered some 800,000 votes, almost double what Jean-Luc Mélenchon missed to finish ahead of Marine Le Pen.
“It’s still strong coffee! Jean-Luc Mélenchon gave his sponsorship to Philippe Poutou of the NPA, who took 270,000 votes from him… The ‘rebellious’ shot himself in the foot!”answers Fabien Roussel in his book, Happy days are ahead of us (Cherche Midi, 2023), takes over Le Figaro. “It’s me who should be complaining about the role of the polls in the days leading up to the vote, the reversal of voters, the ‘useful vote’!”he adds, quoted by Le Monde (subscribers article).
The enmity between the two men has not ceased since. “What incredible aggressiveness. It’s been going on for three years on all counts, before and since Nupes”tweeted Jean-Luc Mélenchon on Friday, after the projection of Fabien Roussel towards Manuel Bompard.
“Every time I come up with an idea that doesn’t fit the nails, I get hit on it”then reacted Fabien Roussel, in front of journalists.