Stéphane Burgatt (in Marseille), edited by Solène Leroux
modified to
6:24 p.m., April 26, 2022
There are 47 days left for the parties to mobilize voters for the legislative elections. They must also define their own strategy. On the left, the battle for the third round is launched with a meeting on Wednesday between La France insoumise and the Socialist Party to find a common banner in the legislative elections, with the Greens, the Communist Party and the New Anti-Capitalist Party. Discussions have already started, but at this stage, no white smoke. Illustration in Marseille, stronghold of the rebellious France of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
“Only we will not succeed”, concede the rebellious executives of the department, like Mohamed Bensaada, who has been following the negotiations for almost two weeks. “There is good news coming from the side of the ecologists, there is good news coming from the side of the communists …”, he recalls at the microphone of Europe 1. “Our colleagues, who work on the negotiations, have not slept for 284 hours. They are doing for the best. We have made progress, we have setbacks, we see the letters that are exchanged. There is something positive. Personally, I remain hopeful that we will be able to lead to something relevant,” he says confidently.
Deadline set for May 7 for an agreement
The Popular Union and not the Union of the Left, with the desire to get out of this logic of old cartel agreements, slips Katia Yakoubi, host of the Marseille campaign. “We want it to be done around a real project of rupture, not an old-fashioned union of the left,” she says. “Otherwise, it’s useless!” And to name the different parties contacted: “There is the PCF, there is EELV, there is the NPA.”
The Socialist Party was also contacted, “but the problem with the PS is that today, when I hear Olivier Faure who does not want to retire at 60 and we do not really understand his project, there, it is sure that he puts the brakes on his own”, concedes Katia Yakoubi. “But we also include it in it.” It’s a race against time with an outcome still uncertain, they recognize, with a deadline set for May 7th.