“We managed to unite around a program”, assured Sunday, December 5 on franceinfo the president of the group La France rebellious to the National Assembly, Mathilde Panot, after the meeting of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in Paris-La Défense. According to her, the LFI presidential candidate can rally around “the increase of the minimum wage, retirement at 60, the Constituent or even the end of glyphosate, which are the very majority ideas in our country”.
franceinfo: Jean-Luc Mélenchon believes that there is “a mouse hole” to access the second round. How do you plan to expand it?
Mathilde Panot: The meeting we have just held contributes to this enlargement. In the parliament of the Popular Union that we have set up, there are associations such as the former spokesperson [de l’organisation altermondialiste] Attac, the former president of the [Fédération des conseils de parents d’élèves] or the former national secretary of the Secours populaire. There are also politicians, like the former spokesperson for Sandrine Rousseau, Thomas Portes, and the Communist mayor of Stains. Finally, there are intellectuals and artists like the writer Annie Ernaux, the actress Liliane Rovère or even trade unionists like [l’inspecteur du travail] Anthony Smith. In short, (…) our strategy, that of the Popular Union, [fonctionne] because our ideas are the majority in the country.
Is it to bring together people on the left who no longer speak to each other or to show that Jean-Luc Mélenchon is not the only one to decide within the party?
Jean-Luc Mélenchon has never been alone. This was already said in 2017. Since then, we have had a parliamentary group in the National Assembly as well as in the European Parliament. We have succeeded in uniting around a program with these personalities that we can combine. Don’t worry, in the future we will expand even further.
There were 3,000 people at Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s meeting on Sunday afternoon, when there were more than 10,000 in Villepinte for Eric Zemmour. We can see that it is on the right that the report is favorable …
Not at all. Already, there were 5,000 of us at the meeting. We had decided on this meeting, before Eric Zemmour moreover, in particular because it was the day after the nomination of the candidate The Republicans. And if we want to play the numbers game, I invite everyone to the March 20 march that we will organize on the Sixth Republic. It has already gained momentum with 265,000 supporters. No candidate has this strength today. What we have demonstrated today is that we can form an extremely broad union around ideas such as increasing the minimum wage, retirement at 60, the Constituent or the end of glyphosate, which are ideas very majority in our country. We can go to the second round and win to radically change people’s lives.
There was a lot of talk about the environment in Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s speech this afternoon. Does that mean that it is behind you that we must unite rather than behind the environmentalists?
I believe that we have chosen very clearly. It is not possible to make a green capitalism because we have a problem with capitalism. The candidacy of Jean-Luc Mélenchon is that of breaking with our modes of production and consumption which are responsible for the impasse in which we are. Yes, with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, we will put an end to free trade, we will put an end to agriculture that kills peasants first and foremost and poisons the entire population. We will make a major ecological and united bifurcation of our production and consumption models, which will create millions of jobs in our country. It is Jean-Luc Mélenchon who, today, carries the most important ecological project, the most advanced on earth and who, moreover, already has many proposals of laws which are already ready when we arrive. in power.