Presidential: at the NPA, “we wonder if the best would not be Mélenchon at the polls and Poutou in the street”

In front of 1,600 people gathered in Paris, the revolutionary candidate unfolded his program at length. He especially responded to those who, in his camp, hesitate to slip in a Mélenchon bulletin.

The standoff was (a little) disproportionate. When Emmanuel Macron spoke in front of some 30,000 people at La Défense, Philippe Poutou gathered his troops at the other end of the capital. The organizers reported 1,600 participants seated in the velvet stands of the Cirque d’hiver. No matter: one week before the first round, the challenge was to prove that the anti-capitalist left still has something to say. And this, despite a certain weariness of the candidate who is reflected in the podium. Dressed in his traditional jeans-shirt-sneakers, Poutou advances to the microphone timidly, his hands in the back pockets of his pants. The speech is unusually demoralizing. “I prefer not to talk to you about the polls. We are still at 1%. It is annoying. However, we do a lot of things”, he begins by declaring. Then : “We are treated like children. We are belittled”.

Before launching into a long tirade that is anything but mobilizing. He’s talking about “desert crossing”, “very small media space”, “of a campaign that is not one” and admit to being “nostalgic” of the 2017 debates, which had allowed him to shine against François Fillon and Marine Le Pen. “We do not want to win this election”he admits, before acknowledging that, in any case, his “CV does not correspond to this type of position”. The former Ford worker, unemployed since 2020, even regretted having “a loser profile”. “I was not even able to keep my job”, he blurts out. But where did the determined, combative Philippe Poutou go, ready to go to the front against “this rotten society” ?

Tribute to Alain Krivine

The candidate does not take long to find his usual accents. “Macron no longer has any friends, except the police and the rich”he criticizes, while calling for an end to the “ultra-liberal and anti-social policies”. “We can overturn the system”, he also dreams. A tribute is paid to Alain Krivine, a figure of the far left, who died on March 12. A short video is shown on the screens. His life summed up in words: “barricades”, “dissolution”, “newspaper” and “meeting”. Olivier Besancenot climbs on stage to greet a man who has “never abdicated or turned around”. “The fight must continue”loose the former candidate for the Elysée.

As we know, NPA militants expect little from the elections. The balance of power is played out, according to them, in social mobilization. This does not prevent them from having a program: the SMIC at 1,800 euros net, retirement at 60, the exit from nuclear power, the creation of a million public jobs in five years or the 32-hour week… In an almost full room – a few seats, at the very top, being unoccupied – red flags are waved in all directions. In the rows, people are shouting far-left protest slogans like “Siamo tutti antifascisti”, “We are all children of immigrants” Where “The bosses lay off, let’s lay off the bosses”. The faces are young. Antonin, 20, attends his first meeting. He saw Philippe Poutou on TV and he wanted him “discover in real life” to make “his own opinion”although he is thinking very strongly of slipping a bulletin for Jean-Luc Mélenchon next Sunday. “I want to win, we can’t wait any longer”justifies the young man.

Mélenchon, “the new Mitterrand”?

The question torments many of those who made the trip: should the left be given a chance to reach the second round or vote with his heart? “With a few comrades, we say to ourselves that a good strategy would be to opt for Mélenchon at the polls and Poutou in the street», explains a Parisian student and activist. For another, on the other hand, there is the “fear” than “Mélenchon be the new Mitterrand”. “We take some social measures and then we completely betray the popular classes afterwards”, he explains, a beret on his head. The NPA candidate hears these hesitations. On stage, he admits: “We all live a little in the shadow of Mélenchon, he is the leader on the left”. Corn “a victory for Mélenchon cannot radically change things”asserts the candidate.

For anti-capitalist leaders, it is impossible to ignore the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Hanna, a Ukrainian activist, takes aim at Vladimir Putin in a video: “He’s a dictator who’s freaked out”. For Philippe Poutou, this war is “the illustration of the damage of global capitalism and imperialism”. He says to himself “archi for” the reception of “all Ukrainian refugees” and of “all the others”. “When Arabs or blacks come from Africa via the Mediterranean, we are not ready to welcome them. There is something unhealthy”he shouts.

At the end of the speech, when he has regained his verve, Philippe Poutou admits that he “lacks a political party” in France, which would be both “internationalist, anti-racist, feminist and anti-colonialist”. “We are all orphans of something”, he continues, as if to signify that the NPA, created in 2009 on the ruins of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), is coming to a halt. However, he specifies: “We are not nostalgic for the left which is collapsing”. One more nail in the coffin of the Socialist Party.