Paris (AFP)
The refusal to the left of his censure motion on pensions reminded Jean-Luc Mélenchon that after disappointing Europeans and before delicate municipal elections, the rebellious leader is no longer the master of the game on the left. Worse, he is threatened with isolation.
The PS and the PCF may have indicated that after the start of the parliamentary debate on the pension reform on February 17, the question of a motion of censorship of the left against the government would arise, their immediate rejection on Tuesday of the idea of the leader Insoumis marked the spirits.
The first concerned did not hide his pride wound and did not take off on Thursday in a demonstration in Amiens alongside the deputy François Ruffin. "I was amazed, from the start I fear only that, a spectacle of divisions which harms the movement" against the reform of the government, he told AFP.
"It is not in the Assembly, a simple registration chamber, that the problem of pension reform will be resolved," said Thursday LFI MP François Ruffin, saying "don't care about bickering". An outing which can be understood as a way of putting the snippet into perspective, but also as a critique of the initiative.
The leaders of the other left formations are surprised. LFI had only warned 10 minutes before the announcement, said a socialist parliamentary source. "One day (Jean-Luc Mélenchon) will accept that we work together", tackled the first secretary of the PS Olivier Faure, saying to have asked him "for a month to join the working group that we set up to organize the response "to the reform.
- A response to Le Pen -
In fact, LFI did not participate in these meetings, which brought together almost all of the left forces. And if the movement had taken part in the Saint-Denis meeting in December, Adrien Quatennens, initially scheduled, had finally preferred to go to a television program and send the deputy Eric Coquerel in his place.
The joint work "would quickly have gone wrong. Some are for points retirement," said Mr. Mélenchon with reference to the Socialist Party and part of EELV. The rebels therefore presented their project alone in December.
It is the extension of an autonomist strategy of LFI since the presidential election. Then arrived on the threshold of the second round (19.5%), Jean-Luc Mélenchon has since several times assumed to address civil society and social movements rather than working at "soup with logos" of the union on the left, with the stated objective of taking voters from Marine Le Pen and re-voting the abstainers.
So this winter, he is increasing his trips on pickets. Nothing to rewrite with the cégétiste Philippe Martinez: the two men organized separately their visit to the RATP depot in Vitry, Monday. But Mr. Mélenchon can see that his popularity has remained strong on the radical left, chaining selfies and dedications among the crowd. "We don't have a lot of competition on the left in the GA or on pickets," slips Eric Coquerel to AFP.
The episode of the censure motion recalls that on the political side, the other left forces, from now on, can afford to refuse rebellious initiatives. After failed European elections (6.3%), LFI is not at the center of the game in many cities for the municipal elections in March and its activists must often give up the top of the list in cases of union, in favor EELV.
The leader Insoumis sees further. While in their joint meeting Thursday evening in Amiens, François Ruffin was moved by the entry into the presidential "pre-campaign" of Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon also seemed to set in motion: "We, we must do our duty and be able to say to the whole country: "We know how to do it, we are capable of setting up a government for the general interest, we have the human and intellectual capacity to do so."
© 2020 AFP