Manuel Valls, then Prime Minister, and Christiane Taubira, then Minister of Justice, during a press conference in Paris, December 23, 2015 (POOL / Eric FEFERBERG)
The possible candidacy of Christiane Taubira for the presidential election “only adds” to the “confusion” on the left, commented the former Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls, astonished by “this idea of unity at all costs” that promotes his former minister.
“The possible, probable, conditioned candidacy – I do not know – Christiane Taubira only adds to this confusion”, declared Sunday on Europe 1 the former head of government.
Friday, his former Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira had burst into the campaign, four months from the first round, saying “consider” to be a candidate and ensuring wanting “to put all (his) strength in the last chances of the union “a left struggling in the polls.
“I remain astonished by this idea of unity at all costs without ever questioning the substance and what brings each other together”, commented Manuel Valls while the rebellious candidates Jean-Luc Mélenchon and environmentalist Yannick Jadot refuse the primary now advocated by their socialist rival Anne Hidalgo.
For Manuel Valls, “one of the reasons for the crisis of the left (…) was linked to the fact that there were irreconcilable lefts,” that is to say that “men and women but especially projects, the thought (…) were so distant that this union was artificial and impossible “.
Manuel Valls popularized the expression “irreconcilable lefts” at the end of François Hollande’s five-year term, marked by growing fractures on the left and the very low score of PS candidate Benoît Hamon, however supported by environmentalists, in the 2017 presidential election.
For the former Minister of the Interior, who then tried unsuccessfully a political experiment in Barcelona, the left is in a “political, historical, major impasse for years”, in particular because it “got lost on the identity question “thinking” that this question was taboo “.
“The Republican left must be able to talk about immigration,” said Manuel Valls for whom we must “press the stop button” of immigration and “suspend family reunification”.
“These borders” of the European Union “must be sealed if we come to save asylum and the reception of foreign students,” said the former socialist, who calls for “to regain control of our migration policy before the far right does not come to power “.
Rather than the union of the left, Manuel Valls advocates “the sacred union” against Marine Le Pen “with the backward speech” and Eric Zemmour for whom “the Republic is basically only a parenthesis”.
pyv / ib / spi