Olivier Faure has chosen his running mate.

Johanna Rolland will be the number 2 of the socialist party if the outgoing first secretary is reappointed after the party congress in January, the mayor of Nantes announced on Saturday in the

Journal du Dimanche

.

"I accepted Olivier Faure's proposal to become first deputy national secretary if we have the majority after the vote of the militants", indicates the one who led the campaign of Anne Hidalgo for the presidential election of 2022.

“I am not one of those who desert in the face of difficulty”, explains Rolland, who intends to “contribute to the reconstruction” of the PS, now tied to the Nupes alliance with LFI, EELV and the PCF.

Johanne Rolland addresses in passing a tackle to the former socialist president François Hollande (2012-2017), who must “stop playing against his side, repeating wrongly that the PS is not working.

When one was the last Socialist President of the Republic, one cannot exonerate oneself from everything.

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TV debate on January 6

The three candidates running for the head of the socialist party, the outgoing Olivier Faure and his two opponents the mayor of Vaulx-en-Velin Hélène Geoffroy and the mayor of Rouen Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, will face off during a televised debate on Friday 6 January.

Their orientation texts will be submitted to the vote of the members on January 12th.

A second vote, on January 19, will decide between the two remaining candidates, before a congress on the 25th in Marseille.

Asked about the candidacy of Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, supported by Anne Hidalgo, Johanna Rolland said she did not "understand" it.

“We cannot be for Nupes and at the same time against Nupes”, she asserts.

But “for the future, when the militants have decided on the line, we will have to know how to come together.

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