Paris (AFP)
Eyes riveted on the March Municipalities, EELV environmentalists hope for a "peaceful" November congress. But an opposition between the outgoing leaders and those who claim Yannick Jadot did indeed take place through the two main motions filed Friday.
In front of the journalists, Julien Bayou says "to hope for a boring congress". The current party spokesman, leading the "Growing Together" motion of the outgoing leadership, sums up the activists' desire for consensus.
Convinced that their time has finally come, after being a backup force to the PS, the Greens finally want to succeed to chain a second positive vote, after a successful European elections in May (13.5%).
To proscribe, therefore, the divisions and blows of three-band billiards, for which the party was often known - and mocked. With the rise of ecological consciousness in society, good electoral results and good polls in several cities, "we are aware of having a huge opportunity, and that we would make a fool of ourselves for tearing ourselves apart," says former MEP Eva Sas to AFP.
This did not prevent this former treasurer from presenting a motion, "The time of ecology", against the tandem of spokespersons Julien Bayou and Sandra Regol, who take over the torch of the national secretary David Cormand, elected MEP .
According to Eva Sas, "it takes a relationship of trust between the party and Yannick Jadot" head of the European list and strong man of EELV. She claims to have a "clear" line, claiming to have always supported the vision of Mr. Jadot - who will not position himself publicly at the congress.
Mounir Satouri, signatory of the Sas motion, abounds: unlike Yannick Jadot, Julien Bayou was initially partisan, for the European elections, of an alliance with Générations, the party created by Benoît Hamon: "The outgoing majority must- it be renewed while the options she defended were initially not the same as the one that won the Europeans? "
- "Hegemony" -
This "affirmation of ecology" has been "theorized for three years by Cormand and Jadot has intuitively put into practice", arbitrator a connoisseur of the party.
"We are proposing a team, which we can complete" rather than "overthrow", argues Julien Bayou. "We must assume the radical nature of the specificity ecologist, but that is open, pragmatic, which plays collective", both internally and towards other forces, also think David Cormand.
The operation of the Congress allows this by favoring the synthesis of motions in the second round, on November 30, and the cohabitation of its leaders in the executive is likely.
The two camps could all come together more than they agree on the essential: EELV must go from a "testimony ecology" to an "ecology of responsibility".
In municipal, the party is ambitious. "We do not want to be suppletives any more, we want to govern the executives," insists Yannick Jadot with AFP. The lists conducted by an ecologist are encouraged - even if it remains the sacrosanct principle of "subsidiarity", which allows local activists to decide.
Bordeaux (where EELV was recently credited with 24.5% in a survey), Besançon, Nantes, Villeurbanne, Toulouse or Perpignan are among the targets. Illustration of a new confidence: in Marseille, Sebastien Barles announced his candidacy without waiting for the rally of the left, which is slow to materialize.
Yannick Jadot also says he wants to defuse the prejudices of a "bobo ecology of big cities" by taking "villages or small towns, sometimes having difficulties".
The current Deputy National Secretary Alain Coulombel, who presents the third of four motions, has a negative view of the "hegemonic" strategy endorsed at the Congress. "It does not work, it's the Mélenchon option and we have seen that it has led to isolation, it is necessary to melt the old imagination of the left with the new ecological imagination", he argues, asking a rapid "enlargement" to other leftist forces.
Desired by MM. Cormand and Jadot before the Europeans, the "overtaking" of EELV in a "big common house of the ecology" was rejected because of a more pressing goal, the municipal ones.
© 2019 AFP