Europe 1 with AFP
modified to
06:39, January 20, 2023
Crisis in sight at the PS: the duel between the outgoing Olivier Faure and his rival, the mayor of Rouen Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, reached a climax on the night of Thursday to Friday, when they both claimed to have won the ballot designating the next First Secretary of the Socialist Party.
The situation is grotesque: around 1:30 a.m., Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol announced his victory to the press, followed a few minutes later by Olivier Faure on YouTube. “We won this result with 53.47% of the votes out of 90% of those counted,” said the elected Norman, adding that the gap with his competitor was “no longer recoverable”.
The activists “expressed this evening, by a clear vote, their desire to continue the rally of the left and environmentalists by renewing their confidence in me”, assured Olivier Faure for his part. The two camps, accusing each other of irregularities in the votes, have already announced appeals and requests for cancellations of votes in sections.
A results commission is to meet on Friday. According to the number 2 of the PS, Corinne Narassiguin, Olivier Faure came slightly ahead of the vote, around 52%, according to the first trends relating to “more than 50% of the federations representing more than 50% of the voters”.
Methods from across the Atlantic
These are “the only real figures that can be compiled”, assured the representative of the outgoing candidate, Pierre Jouvet, denouncing an “unacceptable destabilization” on the part of the opposing camp, and “methods that we have seen too much across the Atlantic “, in an allusion to Donald Trump’s never-recognized defeat in the 2020 US presidential election. “Olivier Faure won the ballot with certainty,” he insisted.
Conversely, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol affirms that even if some federations more favorable to Olivier Faure were not yet stripped, he would obtain in the worst case 50.5% of the votes. The mayor of Rouen also requests “the cancellation of a certain number of results”, due to litigation, in particular in the section of Liévin (Pas-de-Calais, around 300 votes). Poll supervisors not authorized to enter polling stations, ballot box stuffing: the two camps accused each other of numerous “irregularities” in the votes.
The winner must be officially inducted at a congress in a week in Marseille. The result could have consequences for the Nupes agreement concluded in May 2022 for the legislative elections with LFI, EELV and the PCF. This alliance has made it possible to keep a group of 32 socialist deputies in the National Assembly, despite the historic failure in the presidential election of candidate Anne Hidalgo (1.7%). But it deeply divided the PS.
Olivier Faure defends his strategy of an “exclusive” left alliance, the only way according to him to block the right and the far right in 2027. Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, more reserved on this agreement, does not hide his reluctance vis-à-vis the party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. He has the support of the third candidate, the mayor of Vaulx-en-Velin Hélène Geoffroy, clearly hostile to Nupes.
The battle of figures will continue on Friday, as during the vote of the militants on the text of orientation last Thursday, intended to determine the balance of power in the authorities of the party.
“On rails”
The members then placed Olivier Faure in the lead with 49.15% of the vote, against 30.51% for Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, and 20.34% for Hélène Geoffroy. In the polling station of the Pantin section, Djamel Benmokhtar, a member for 7 years, chose Olivier Faure, “who can put the PS back on track”. “The party is very sick”, underlines for his part Abdou N., member for “more than 20 years”, who voted “for the party to be reinvigorated”.
Supported by the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, the president of Occitanie Carole Delga and the ex-president François Hollande, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol claims to be the only one who can gather, on a “central path”. For Olivier Faure, the results of the first vote prove that only 20% of members voted against Nupes, confirming his line.
His entourage affirms that he already has “an absolute majority in the national council” (a sort of training parliament, editor’s note), thanks to the support of at least 60 first federal secretaries, who account for a third in the composition of the board. This is a projection, the vote of the first federals will not take place until February.