For the past week, two videos have been looping on the Internet. In the first, filmed in La Courneuve, we see people grabbing a ballot box and locking themselves in a room. “You don’t have the right to do that,” says an activist as the door remains locked. In the second, filmed in Pierrefitte, north of Paris, we see the police intervene in a polling station.
These scenes were sketched last week during the vote which was to appoint the first secretary of the Socialist Party. A vote marred by numerous irregularities and which did not make it possible to decide who, from the current first secretary, Olivier Faure, and his opponent and mayor of Rouen, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, really won. Both having claimed victory with 53% of the vote.
Even if party officials, after a second partial count, officially declared the first re-elected with 51.09% of the vote against 48.91 for his opponent, the quarrel is far from over. She should be transported to the party congress which will take place this weekend in Marseille. A congress that could be “bloody”, writes the newspaper The worldif, by then, the two camps do not reach a political agreement.
“A writhing corpse”
It’s hard to believe that this party, which has only 30 deputies left in the National Assembly and whose candidate Anne Hidalgo won only 1.75% of the presidential vote, ruled France six years ago in sadness. For the journalist The Express Olivier Pérou, author of a book with an emblematic title (Autopsy of a corpse, Fayard), the PS is nothing more than an upside-down corpse. “But it’s a corpse still wriggling,” he said. The spectacle offered for two weeks is terribly distressing in the eyes of the militants. He recalls what the party can do worse: these reclusive hatreds and these low blows which have marked its history. »
In some ways, what is happening today is reminiscent of the duel between Ségolène Royal and Martine Aubry at the Reims Congress in 2008. If ballot box stuffing took place — as it was said at the time —, no candidate had claimed victory before Ségolène Royal was finally appointed first secretary.
There are no fundamental ideological disagreements in the PS, and I don’t see anyone among the opponents who would really be ready to leave NUPES. What is essentially at stake is the future of Olivier Faure, who is perceived as an obstacle to a possible presidential candidacy of Carole Delga, for example.
But, it was another time, recalls Olivier Pérou. The party then had 233,000 members. There are only 40,000 left today. And these are official figures, whereas only 20,000 members deigned to come forward during this election.
At the heart of the disagreements which divide the party, we find the alliance strategy followed by Olivier Faure, which consists in taking shelter within the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (NUPES). This electoral alliance born at the time of the legislative elections, and which also brings together the ecologists of Europe Ecology-The Greens (EELV), is largely dominated by the radical left of La France insoumise (LFI) and its charismatic leader, although disputed, Jean-Luc Melenchon.
save the furniture
If Olivier Faure says he has thus saved the furniture, the local elected officials of the party who still play a role in municipal or regional bodies find it difficult to be associated with the insurrectionary rhetoric of LFI. Especially since the bulk of PS voters did not go to this party, but to Emmanuel Macron. Olivier Faure’s opponents accuse him of being “under the ideological influence” of Mélenchon, when they do not speak of “guardianship” and “dilution of the PS”.
This is particularly the case in the Occitanie region, where Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol obtained his best results with the support of the president of the said region, Carole Delga. “I prefer fifteen to twenty deputies who assume their line” rather than 30 with the NUPES, explained to the World the Vice-President of the Regional Council, Kamel Chibli.
According to journalist Olivier Pérou, these disagreements are nevertheless secondary. “There are no fundamental ideological disagreements in the PS, and I don’t see anyone among the opponents who would really be ready to leave NUPES. What is essentially at stake is the future of Olivier Faure, who is perceived as an obstacle to a possible presidential candidacy of Carole Delga, for example. It is also Anne Hidalgo’s revenge against a first secretary whom she believes did not remember her for the presidency. In fact, the opponents want his head. »
Opposite, the first secretary denounces “the return of the elephants” and especially the invisible hand of his sworn enemy, the former president François Hollande, who never fails to be ironic by qualifying Olivier Faure as “disputed leader”. “Without the NUPES, the left would have disappeared in favor of the far right,” says its lieutenant, PS spokesperson, Pierre Jouvet.
If he ruled out the presentation of a common list in the European elections in 2024, Olivier Faure cherishes the dream of a single candidacy for the next presidential election. According to him, “the left, and especially the PS, has no other possible paths for 2027”.
A “collective suicide”
How can such a split party, whose two main candidates have even refused to debate publicly, survive? The question is on everyone’s lips. Even if the Marseille congress risks confirming the election of Olivier Faure, who has the support of a majority of national delegates, the party of Jaurès, Blum and Mitterrand seems to be at the end of its rope. Whether he wins or not, with such a slim victory, Olivier Faure “is morally and politically disavowed,” said Socialist Senator Marie-Arlette Carlotti.
“The PS is at an impasse”, has long maintained the old activist and former deputy Julien Dray. “The majority of socialists are now outside the party,” the magazine told Point the one we call here the Black Baron, because of a television series of the same name inspired by his political adventures in the PS. According to him, there is no point in obsessing over a corpse. The time would have come “to rebuild a great socialist and republican force, progressive but anti-productivist”.
“We are on the verge of a split, recognizes Olivier Pérou. The question at stake is whether the PS will remain an active force or a kind of Radical Left Party (PRG). A once important party that is now only a shadow of itself. This congress looks like a collective suicide where the only issue seems to be to maintain a structure that still brings in money and has a few militants. »
On the right, the editorialist of Figaro Guillaume Tabard asks essentially the same question: “Is the old party of the Malesherbes estate and the rue de Solférino coming to the end of its history? The answer will not be long in coming.