The list drawn by Mr. Roussel for the national council received 80.4% of the vote after a vote on Monday.

Mr. Roussel, who will turn 54 in a few days, has led the PCF since November 2018 and his re-election was hardly suspense after his policy text had already collected 82% of the vote in January.

Unfortunate candidate for the 2022 presidential election with 2.3% of the vote, Fabien Roussel was acclaimed at the 39th congress of the PCF at the Palais du Pharo for his truthfulness and his pugnacity to assert his positions against Jean-Luc Mélenchon's La France insoumise (LFI) within the Nupes.

The very first words of his closing speech of the congress were for the Marseillais, struck by the "terrible drama" of the collapse of a building in the center of the city, and the emergency services, which the room gave a long ovation.

Four days before the long-awaited decisions of the Constitutional Council on the pension reform, the national secretary of the PCF has again called on President Emmanuel Macron to withdraw his reform raising the retirement age from 62 to 64.

"The president of the Republic has lost the French, he has lost opinion, he has lost the unions," he said.

He expressed the Communist Party's ambition to "restore retirement at 60".

"Retirement at 60, we fought to win it, we will fight to keep it," the activists resumed in chorus in the room where flags waved in the colors of the party.

"Changing the bathwater"

Taking up his antiphon, Fabien Roussel proposed to "build a new Popular Front to build together a free, strong and happy France".

"Because with Macron, it's hello sadness every morning, and it's soup to the grimace every night," he added, accusing the head of state of having "transformed happiness into privilege".

"To build a new Popular Front is to build a program (...) in the respect of everyone, without hegemony of anyone," he said, calling once again "to go further than the union built in the aftermath of the presidential election" between La France insoumise, the Socialist Party (PS), Europe Ecology - The Greens (EELV) and the PCF.

"It's not about throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but you still have to change the water from time to time!" he said to applause.

More concretely, Fabien Roussel announced that he would ask "in the coming weeks" for a "working meeting" of the left forces gathered within the Nupes "to take stock of what we have built so far and what everyone wants to do tomorrow".

"At the same time, we will continue to discuss with all those who wish," he said, stressing that "the door to Colonel Fabien Square will always be open."

At the opening of the congress on Friday, the deputy of the North had raised the tone against LFI, assuming his statements on a Nupes "outdated" and to widen towards the center left.

"Mind your own business," he told LFI, which called on the Communists to "clarify" their position after the statements of their leader.

The tension had gone down a notch on Saturday with the arrival at the congress of the coordinator of La France insoumise Manuel Bompard, who had assured that he had no "intention" of "getting angry" with the communists.

© 2023 AFP