Where to start ? Its imposing size. His face, too. Bernard Pignerol had fine and rigorously straight features. They recalled the rigidity of his function: magistrate on the Council of State. His eyes and his words, however, had the mischievousness of his passion: politics, which had sharpened him since adolescence, he, this son of a resistance fighter, wildly on the left, viscerally revolutionary to the point of waving the red flag on the banks of the Danube at the age of 16, when his parents sent him to a religious boarding school in Austria where he enjoyed founding a Trotskyist cell. He returns (a little) to order by putting one foot at the ENA (Valmy promotion) alongside Bruno Le Maire, his class representative, and the other at the UNEF, in the communist branch, among the hard. And then so many other things: founder of SOS Racisme alongside Julien Dray and Harlem Désir, traveling partner of Jean-Luc Mélenchon since the early hours of the Socialist Left, a current of the PS, member of his cabinet in the government Jospin, “international” adviser to the mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë, full-fledged executive of rebellious France, etc. What hadn’t he done?
Bernard Pignerol died on Sunday May 21, in the early morning, following cancer. “Our comrade passed away in death. Cancer killed him. Distress strikes us […]. He was an essential companion and friend for me and for many of us”, wrote Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in a message tinged with emotion and published on social networks. Who else to say the worst, if not Mélenchon, his lifelong friend? It seems that friendship does not exist in politics, except among these two without a doubt. Nothing has ever really altered their relationship, neither time, nor differences, strategic or politics, nor low blows or bloodshed. “It’s the purest definition of what we call brothers in arms in politics”, explain in unison their comrades yesterday at the PS like those Few people knew the rebellious leader better than him, in his flesh and his torments.
Shield
He spoke of “his Mélenchon” with admiration as much as a mad desire to protect him, even if it meant excusing him for all these contradictions. It didn’t make a wrinkle. He was not only an intellectual support, but also the shield of Mélenchon. During the search of the headquarters of rebellious France in 2017, the giant, loud-mouthed, also goes in front of the police. He raises his voice in front of the investigators, loudly, very loudly, tells them their duties, reminds the chief rebel and his collaborators present, in front of the cameras, of their rights. He was the one that Mélenchon never took his eyes off during the demonstrations, and especially when the crowd around him became too oppressive, when “the erotomaniacs want to rub shoulders with him and it bothers him”. Always the same merry-go-round: Mélenchon turned to his sidekick, leaned into his ear and pretended to engage in a session of low masses resembling crucial strategic discussions.
Pignerol, the guardian of the temple. He is one of the few, among the former members of the Gauche Socialiste (GS), on whom Jean-Luc Mélenchon has not turned his back since his break with the PS in 2008. He forgives him for almost everything, including not join him in the adventure of the Left Party, and even the worst: to campaign for his nemesis in 2012, François Hollande. Jérôme Guedj, Éric Benzekri, Marie-Noëlle Lienemann… Mélenchon ignores them, if not curses them in private, but Pignerol keeps the link, however thin it may be. “Bernard liked being at a crossroads, chatting with yesterday’s friends and talking about today. He was a man of influence, not a breakaway guy,” recalls PS deputy Jérôme Guedj. And when Jean-Luc Mélenchon entrusted him with the keys to the Institut La Boétie, the rebellious training school, of which he was the first president, he restricted himself to the work of archivist. To him the heavy task of telling the novel of Mélenchon and his political heritage. “You know, it’s also a tool for when you’ve stopped, he told the leader. Because one day, you’re going to stop.”
“I’m too old, but why not a ministry?”
Pignerol, the Janissary, the Cardinal. The secret ops man. It is he who motivates the candidate to resign from the Grand Orient of France in 2020, after relations were greatly strained between the rebellious leader and the Masonic lodge, in particular after the searches at his home. “It was becoming untenable, confided Bernard Pignerol. Me, they don’t come looking for me on Mélenchon! I have seniority.” In 2021, before the race for the Élysée officially starts but is already simmering in people’s minds, he is working to implement the intimate conviction of Jean-Luc Mélenchon who predicts the emergence of a fourth man. . A sort of right-wing “Mr. X”, siphoning off the extreme right of Marine le Pen and ending up finishing off the right of the Republicans. Pignerol is therefore going to convince General Pierre de Villiers, Chief of Staff of the Armies dismissed by Emmanuel Macron and whose noise of a candidacy is still buzzing. “I discussed a lot with Pierre de Villiers so that he could be a candidate. We had theorized that a candidacy was needed between Le Pen and LR, but Zemmour then gushed.”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon saw big for his old friend. In 2017, when the candidate of rebellious France touched the second round of the presidential election in the polls, he offered him the post of secretary general of the Élysée in the event of victory. Nothing came of it, but the idea stuck. Five years later, Mélenchon reiterates the proposal but Pignerol declines: “I am too old, but why not minister, in a sensitive ministry?” It should have been the Interior, Defense or the Quai d’Orsay. The vote and the sickness, vicious, will decide otherwise. When the Nupes negotiations put the left in turmoil the day after the election of Emmanuel Macron, Jean-Luc Mélenchon pretended to keep his distance and, at night, chatted at length with Pignerol on the strategy to be pursued. When the rebellious young guard dreams of cutting off heads, he is one of those who push him to open discussions with the PS, and to do everything so that the old red house, even if it has collapsed, joins the coalition.
Estates
La Nupes born, Pignerol sees appetites sharpen before anyone else. To his visitors, he bluntly slipped the names, his “list of six”, the only ones capable “of reaching the level of Jean-Luc”. He was hardly convinced by François Ruffin – “one cannot be a part-time chef” – or Adrien Quatennens, “the darling child” whom Pignerol already doubted, before the case for domestic violence: “Is it that he is capable of inventing a line? He takes out elements of language, he does not create them.” He found the other two “darlings”, Mathilde Panot and Manuel Bompard, “more creative”. The first is the one “that no one sees coming”, and the other impressed him as much as it made him laugh. “It’s the most politically subtle. He makes equations for fun, I don’t understand anything, laughed Pignerol. It’s the student neighbor who puts his hood on the street as if he was going to bag the bags. old ladies.” Of Clémentine Autain, he said that she knew how to “take the light”, that she had “a personal density capable of producing a story that is not only political.” And from Alexis Corbière, he had understood that he would continue to cling on like an early fighter refusing to be replaced by the young guard. All this he was already repeating to Mélenchon.
Both knew that in politics, one does not designate one’s successor, that he imposes himself on oneself. But lately, concern has been growing in Bernard Pignerol about the retraining of his political animal. He saw the dirty tricks being prepared, and grew annoyed, scrutinizing and threatening those he suspected of wanting to hold the knife. Let the impatient calm down, anyway 2022 was Mélenchon’s “last presidential election”.
“You will have to teach me to do nothing”
He swore it to L’Express, it was in March 2022, sitting at a table in the Athéna Bar in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris. A boui-boui that he appreciated, and where he was appreciated, close to the Council of State. We pouted, convinced that Mélenchon lived only by and for the supreme election. “In five years, it would not be reasonable for him to be a candidate. I will advise him not to go, he hammered. Everyone thinks he wants to die in his chair, like Molière, but he has a small -daughter, whom he did not necessarily see growing up, like his daughter for that matter. He gave so much to politics. And when he spoke about it to the chief, the latter retorted, mockingly: “You will have to teach me to do nothing, you who are a high official.” Mélenchon knew he was much more.
This same day of the presidential spring, Bernard Pignerol confided one of his greatest anxieties about Mélenchon. Of those who make his friend panic, sometimes. Who will stay with him after politics? Who will talk to him about painting and accompany him to the museum, their two eternal passions? Who will invite the other to the restaurant to apologize for a badly controlled anger, a rule between the two men for the years at the ministry? “I hope that when I die, there will be a photo of Jean-Luc and me at HQ”, he smiled, looking concerned: “when the lights go out, maybe he will find himself all alone.” The friend of always has already gone.