Current does not flow. The First Secretary of the PS Olivier Faure said he was ready this Saturday April 16 to engage in a dialogue with Jean-Luc Mélenchon for the legislative elections, but the leader of the LFI deputies Mathilde Panot replied that there would be no discussions with the PS and that this refusal was “definitive”.
While the Insoumis proposed Friday to environmentalists and communists to form a coalition for the legislative elections of June 12 and 19, but excluding the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure assures that “(his) hand is outstretched”, in an interview with the newspaper Release.
“I am ready to engage in a dialogue on the condition that it is not the staging of a lying poker”, explained the First Secretary who, on the evening of the first round, had called for “a pact for social justice and ecological”.
“It is not possible to refuse the discussion”
Nevertheless, Olivier Faure recognizes that “the presidential campaign has left traces” between the two camps, but “now we have to overcome the resentments that exist”. According to him, “unless you accept the idea that the left has only a minority vocation, it is not possible to refuse discussion with the left-wing formation which has the strongest territorial network”. ie the PS.
Likewise, he poses some principles for an agreement: “First, aim for single candidates wherever the threat from the extreme right exists. Then, avoid fratricidal duels each time there is a leftist or environmentalist”. “Finally, agree as often as possible on the candidate who has the best chance of winning against the right, taking into account the results of the last elections, the dynamics specific to the presidential election and the territorial settlements “, he continues.
For Olivier Faure, “our fellow citizens do not procrastinate. Faced with different types of threats from the right and the far right, they are playing for the win, not the umpteenth episode of ‘small murders between friends’”. Thus, “the rebels bear the main responsibility for the gathering because of their score. But they would be wrong to see it as a blank check,” he insists.
“This refusal is final”
But while the rebellious want to build a coalition on the basis of their program, Olivier Faure believes that “the gathering will never be caporalization. Disagreements exist. (…) We must come together on our common fights while respecting different stories and projects.” “I respect the rebellious but I am not rebellious. No one will pass under a fathom”, he warns.
The president of the group of deputies La France insoumise Mathilde Panot answered in the JDD, that there would be “no discussions” of her party with the PS, “and this refusal is final”. “The PS was very clear,” she argues.
The PS candidate “Anne Hidalgo did not want to build anything with us. We have taken note of his attacks and his refusal to draw a lucid assessment of François Hollande’s five-year term.
However, it also specifies that the environmentalist candidates Yannick Jadot and communist Fabien Roussel “must be accountable for their numerous attacks on Mélenchon, it is a prerequisite”. “We are not asking for a public flogging exercise,” she explains, “but they owe us an explanation. Yesterday for Jadot, we were Poutine’s friends. Today, this does not seem to prevent his party from wanting to discuss with us”.