Paris (AFP)
The insubordinate France's electoral committee released Wednesday a first round of leadership invitations and validations of local strategies for the municipal elections, which gave rise to friction.
The work of the electoral committee, which met for the first weekend in mid-October, was delayed and it took a second session, from Saturday to Tuesday evening, to validate the projects of unsubordinated local activists in 272 municipalities.
In Paris, LFI supports the list "Let us decide ourselves" led by Danielle Simonnet against the very likely candidacy of the outgoing mayor Anne Hidalgo.
In Lyon, LFI supports the mayor of the 1st arrondissement of Paris Nathalie Perrin-Gilbert, also supported by his Gram movement, the Republican and Social Left of Emmanuel Maurel and Ensemble.
In the Phocean city, LFI validates the participation of the leader Sophie Camard - deputy Jean-Luc Mélenchon - in Printemps Marseillais, collective citizen to which a part of the PS, Générations, the PCF or Place public have joined.
On the other hand, local EELV activists, believing the process to be too slow, voted for a stand-alone list, even though voting conditions, with weak participation, were debated.
"Their line is that in all cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, they make lists EELV", regretted with AFP Martine Billard, member of the electoral committee of LFI, to justify the absence of alliance between the two formations in most major cities.
Notable exceptions: Toulouse and Grenoble. In the pink city, the electoral committee has given its support to the presence of the Insoumis to the collective citizen Archipelago, long established and in which EELV participates. But the question of the head of the list, that the Rogue wants citizens and not from the ranks ecologists, remains controversial.
In Grenoble, the electoral committee of LFI supports the outgoing mayor Eric Piolle, whose candidacy in 2014 had been supported by a radical ecologist and radical left, competitor to the PS.
In Nantes, he validates the participation in "Nantes in common", a collective citizen created for several months, in which LFI does not claim the top of the list.
In many cities (Lille, Roubaix, Metz, Rennes ...), the electoral committee validated the creation and conduct by local activists of citizen collectives, most of the time associating the name of the city to "standing" or "In common".
These committee decisions are not without friction. In Montpellier, nothing less than the MP Muriel Ressiguier, who worked for the rapprochement with EELV and other left parties through the initiative "Confluence", denounced in a statement the support of the electoral committee to the collective citizen "We are" .
According to her, the decision "disrupted and provoked discontent among local" activists. Ms. Ressiguier said she relied on the decision of these activists, suggesting possible dissent from them.
"We did not want to wait for the decision of EELV" on a possible alliance, said Martine Billard. Local environmental activists named Clothilde Ollier as the leader in October.
In Maubeuge (North), LFI had to publish a statement to contradict the militant Fabrice Preux, who according to La Voix du Nord hired LFI in support of the Gaullist entrepreneur Jean-Pierre Rombeaut: "It is obviously out of the question that we were supporting a candidate whose values are totally contrary to those of France Insoumise. "
© 2019 AFP