LEGISLATIVE: KICK-OFF OF THE “UNION OF THE LEFT” CAMPAIGN
PARIS (Reuters) – Rebellious, socialists, environmentalists and communists kicked off their joint campaign on Saturday for the legislative elections on June 12 and 19, an unprecedented alliance which aims to impose cohabitation on re-elected President Emmanuel Macron.
Socialists, environmentalists and communists agreed this week to join the “union of the left” led by the camp of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who established himself as the main actor of the French left by arriving third in the first round of the election. presidential with 22% of the vote.
This alliance called New popular ecological and social union (Nupes) plans to appoint the latter to Matignon in the event of a majority in the National Assembly.
“The 40 years of neoliberalism dominating the planet, ransacking societies, plundering nature, destroying human beings, this system has run out of steam, and everyone knows it. So we have to find another way”, declared Jean-Luc Mélenchon in front of hundreds of sympathizers in Aubervilliers.
“There is no way out of the crisis facing humanity, except in breaking with such a system”, he continued, while inviting the French to carry out “an act of collective resistance to an era of social, ecological and democratic mistreatment” by voting for Nupes.
The union agreement provides for retirement at 60 (against 62 currently), the rise of the minimum wage to 1,400 euros as well as the renationalization of EDF, ENGIE, highways and airports.
It was adopted in pain by the Socialist Party (PS), which voted for the text with 167 votes for and 101 against.
Former President François Hollande, former Minister Stéphane Le Foll and former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who left the party, said they were opposed to this alliance, which they considered unnatural with a Eurosceptic party, hostile to NATO and the World Trade Organization.
“Of course we have differences, who denies them? Neither you, nor me, nor anyone,” said the first secretary of the PS, Olivier Faure, in Aubervilliers, nevertheless considering it more important to stand up to oppose Emmanuel Macron.
“We have to fight it with all our strength, so that in the next few weeks we can say that it is going to cost someone but not the poorest (…), those who already have too much. This is the project that we can all carry together, all the left and the environmentalists,” he said.
The president of the Occitanie region, Carole Delga, who poses as the first opponent of Olivier Faure, declared on Saturday in Le Parisien that she would bring together the activists refusing this alliance and would mobilize to elect as many deputies as possible under another banner to the legislative elections.
(Caroline Pailliez, edited by Tangi Salaün)