by Elizabeth Pineau
PARIS (Reuters) – The Socialist Party (PS) decided at midday on Friday to suspend its participation in negotiations with insubordinate France (LFI) with a view to forming a “union of the left” for the legislative elections of 12 and June 19, which nevertheless seemed to be on the right track.
In an internal message addressed to the national secretariat of the PS, of which Reuters was able to consult an extract, the First Secretary of the party, Olivier Faure, regrets the “hegemonic logic” which according to him prevails within the movement of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who came third in the first round of the presidential election under the banner of the People’s Union.
“We want to reach an agreement of all the left and environmentalists. But to achieve this requires a real shared logic”, writes Olivier Faure in this message consulted by Reuters.
“We must break with any hegemonic logic and accept plurality. At this stage we do not have the guarantee”, adds the socialist leader.
This development contrasts with the optimism displayed by the environmentalist leader Julien Bayou on an electoral agreement with LFI, and with the good will which the PS seemed to show earlier in the day.
In an internal document made public on Friday morning, the party of former President François Hollande said it had subscribed to certain measures of the program of the Popular Union, while formulating its own proposals to achieve a union of the left.
This four-page text, in which the PS writes that it has responded to the “twelve markers” submitted by the Popular Union, was described in the socialist ranks as an “additional step” on the way to a rapprochement between the two parties which have often been at loggerheads in the past.
“The text (…) promotes convergences, without hiding our differences, in particular on the European question”, specified the PS in a press release.
Presenting his text as a “contribution to the discussions with a view to bringing together the left and environmentalists around a base of proposals”, he insisted however on the fact that “the discussion has only really begun”.
EACH PARTY WILL HAVE A SEPARATE GROUP AT THE ASSEMBLY
In the text transmitted to the other left-wing parties, the PS is eager to add “many proposals” to the program of the Popular Union, “in faithfulness to (its) fundamentals and to (its) priorities”.
While the party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon does not exclude “disobedience” to the rules of the European Union (EU), the Socialists for their part affirm that they “will refuse
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