According to the former President of the Republic François Hollande, who led the PS for 11 years, "there can be no alternative to the left without a great central force". "And the PS has a duty to play this role again," he said in an interview with Ouest-France published on Saturday.
LREM "is not a real party"
"The PS cannot remain as it is. It has a considerable space to occupy vis-à-vis the Republic on the march, which has slipped to the right" and "is not a real party", adds François Hollande. "It must take hold of ecology and link it to two dimensions: social, without which there can be no successful transition; economic because the change underway, caused by the health crisis and global warming, must lead to a different growth from the past ".
Asked about the rallying strategy defended by the current First Secretary Olivier Faure, François Hollande excludes a rally that would come about "on the disappearance of a major component of the left, the one that allowed the victories of François Mitterrand and (him -) even in the presidential election ".
No rallying to the Greens or Mélenchon
In 2022, the PS, meeting this weekend in Blois, must "rally" neither to the environmental candidate nor to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. "Many of our fellow citizens are convinced of the ecological imperative but not of the responses of the Greens. Many also aspire to a profound transformation of our country, but do not share the sovereignist and anti-European positions of the rebels", he analyzes .
Asked about a new candidacy in 2022, François Hollande ensures "not to look for anything for himself". "On the other hand, I can be useful to my country, by my ideas and my experience, in the crisis it is going through today. An application presupposes conditions and not simply an ambition," he adds, however.
For the choice of the candidate, François Hollande does not plead for a primary which "always creates a division". "It is the reality which will decide and not a procedure". Because, for the next presidential election, "the game is open for the left if it carries a daring and credible project," he said.
Asked about the hypothesis of a new Macron-Le Pen duel in 2022, the former head of state is categorical: "all the forecasts made two years after a presidential election have never been verified. The favorites announced n 'have never been there.