Jean-Luc Mélenchon does not always advance masked. His intentions are sometimes not surprising as they put him at the center of the game. Since the dissolution decided by Emmanuel Macron the day after the European elections, the strategy of the pater families of La France insoumise (LFI) has not evolved: he wants the resignation of the head of state, that a presidential election be organized before 2027 in which he would be a candidate. He himself admitted it, with the modesty of a gazelle, last November 17 on the set of Dimanche en politique on France 3: “If it’s an election that takes place there right away, no doubt I can be encouraged to go.” He is in a “permanent campaign”, he says, and it is in this light that we had to understand this summer his programmatic extremism – “the program of the NFP, nothing but the program of the NFP” – even though the union of the left did not have the numerical forces necessary to pass its texts. It is always for the same reason that it was necessary to observe the insistence of the Insoumis to file (unilaterally) a procedure for the impeachment of the president at the start of the school year – an operation rejected in the Assembly which returns through the back door during the parliamentary niche from LFI this Thursday, November 28. And it is in the light of this presidential ambition of the rebellious leader that we must analyze the attacks of LFI in recent days…
The latest one is not the most innocent. The deputy of the North, Ugo Bernalicis tabled a bill aimed at “repealing the offense of advocating terrorism from the Penal Code”. The offense, implemented by François Hollande in 2014, has been the subject of numerous criticism as it has been diverted from its main purpose in recent years. Since the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, prosecutions in this area have been rife. The day after the Hamas attack, the Minister of Justice at the time, Eric Dupond-Moretti, himself wrote a circular asking prosecutors to initiate such proceedings for any public remarks “praising attacks” by Hamas , or “presenting them as legitimate resistance to Israel”. Another ambiguity of the measure: a simple citizen or association can now file a complaint for glorifying terrorism or report any suspicious behavior on Pharos, the government platform for reporting illegal online content and behavior. Thus, between October 7, 2023 and April 23, 2024, the Paris public prosecutor’s office recorded 386 referrals in this regard, according to AFP, but many found themselves dismissed.
“Big red that stains”
One of the inspirations for this text, the former anti-terrorism judge Marc Trévidic, today denounces its excesses. “We are in a real abuse, a totally misused use of the law. A use which is perpetuated”, he said in an interview with Humanitylast October. This is the whole subject posed by LFI: this criminal offense has come to target trade unionists, environmental activists and even political leaders including the Insoumises Rima Hassan and Mathilde Panot. The two LFI elected officials were simply interviewed in April by the Parisian judicial police when the general secretary of the CGT Nord, Jean-Paul Delescaut, was sentenced to one year in prison for a leaflet dated October 10, 2023 where one could read: “The horrors of the illegal occupation have accumulated. Since Saturday [7 octobre]they receive the responses they provoked.” He appealed the decision. If the Constitutional Council validated the criminal offense in 2018, the European Court of Human Rights condemned France in June 2022 In his interview with the communist daily, Marc Trévidic, whom the Insoumis have constantly cited in recent days, considers that with “the notion of apology, we are on the border of the crime of opinion”.
In short, a political, legal, even philosophical subject, as legitimate as it is complex, which would have required a debate with the judiciary, magistrates and lawyers, police representatives and, it goes without saying, other political forces. At the time of the vote in 2014, the proposal from Manuel Valls and Bernard Cazeneuve – then Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior – had provoked some criticism from the ranks… of the right. Hence this question: did LFI have another objective with this text tabled by its deputy Ugo Bernalicis, unilaterally, without the opinion of its other left-wing partners? “Is this a principled PPL, or does it serve to provoke and create buzz? I have difficulty understanding the intentions of its author,” asks an environmentalist parliamentarian. In the middle of the trial of the accomplices in the assassination of Samuel Paty, the operation raises even more questions as it seems to be a matter of political will rather than a political or legal debate. One of his colleagues from La France insoumise laments: “We are fundamentally right, but do we have to do this like fools, with big red staining (sic)?”
Matignon or the presidential election?
To tell the truth, although the Insoumis deny it, their enterprise makes it possible to tighten relations a little more within the New Popular Front. The Socialist Party, the second force within the NFP, did not wait to express its disagreement with Ugo Bernalicis’ bill. Yet another episode in the no longer so latent war which pits LFI against the PS within the NFP, since its birth, and which raises the specter of an explosion of the union of the left, a year after the death of the Nupes. “There are opportunistic maneuvers, both on the part of the Insoumis and part of the PS to explode the collective framework of the NFP,” sighs a PCF lieutenant. In the eyes of many NFP elected officials, it is less the substance of this text than “the next political blow, the one that arrives with the censorship of Michel Barnier” which obsesses Jean-Luc Mélenchon and animates him.
Because time is running out, for him as for the socialists. Censorship of the Prime Minister appears a little more inevitable now that the National Rally is hesitant to vote on a motion in this direction. Here too, the ambitions of the socialists differ from those of the Insoumis: Matignon or the presidential election? A fall of the Prime Minister would once again push the NFP to question the role of Lucie Castets, its candidate collectively designated to occupy the throne of Matignon. If the socialists and communists have turned this page, and the ecologists no longer make the summer candidate the alpha and omega of the alliance, the Insoumis do not deviate from their line concerning the future of Lucie Castets. She is the one who must, they say, become Prime Minister in the event of censorship. Guest of BFMTV on Sunday November 24, the president of the LFI group in the National Assembly Mathilde Panot estimated that once the Prime Minister is censored, Emmanuel Macron will only have two choices: “Appoint Lucie Castets or leave. ” The President of the Republic, who never considered appointing her last summer, has not changed his perspective on her. “The Insoumis know this very well and they take us for idiots: it is the second option that they prefer and hope for,” annoys a confidant of Lucie Castets.
Michel Barnier bis
The socialists, like many environmentalist and communist deputies, do not really believe in an early presidential election. They prefer to play Matignon’s way, but they still need a clear majority which they still do not have. “The revenue side of the budget, which we have remodeled very profoundly, has only received the approval of a minority of parliamentarians [NDLR : 192 voix]. We were not able to find a majority. I don’t see how we could, after Michel Barnier, propose a government that is even more minority than his was. There is no possible path without political agreement. There is no way out of the political crisis without a political agreement”, believes the PS deputy for Eure Philippe Brun, who renews his proposal from the end of August. In a column at Worldhe suggested that the parliamentary groups negotiate reciprocal commitments in exchange for a waiver of censorship of the future government.
Its group president, Boris Vallaud, therefore brought the idea up to date on France Inter, Sunday November 26, by proposing conditions of non-censorship in the event of a post-Barnier government. The socialist already lists two: the increase in wages and the abolition of the age measurement (64 years) of the pension reform. The communists, who advocate the repeal – quite simply – of the pension reform, the increase in salaries and the ban on stock market layoffs, will discuss in detail the post-Barnier – or the “Barnier-bis”, dixit an oil from the Place du Colonel Fabien – next Saturday during a PCF National Council. Before that, the bosses of the parliamentary groups in the Assembly and the Senate, André Chassaigne and Cécile Cukierman, will meet the Prime Minister this Thursday at 10 a.m. The PS initiative was roundly criticized by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “Looking for a national union, to transform the NFP into a “new common base” with others. The PS is looking for allies. But it will be without LFI,” he said on the social network that crowds of rebels, elected officials or sympathizers, follow suit by accusing their socialist allies of compromise with the Macronists. “A rupture” of the NFP line, declared Manuel Bompard, the coordinator of LFI. However, on August 12, a few weeks before the idea launched by Philippe Brun, the same Insoumis, through the hand of Mathilde Panot, co-signed a letter with Lucie Castets, proposing an outstretched hand to the forces of the Macronist central bloc. At the time, they had no objection to the idea of building, text by text. At the end of August, Jean-Luc Mélenchon went even further, paving the way for an NFP government without the participation of the Insoumis.
Ecological discomfort
Enough to make us believe in a new position of principle rather than political reality, given the NFP’s weak majority in the National Assembly. “We can no longer be in the management of political careers”, considers the socialist Philippe Brun, who pleads for censorship of the Barnier government in order to then propose “a left-wing government with a non-censorship agreement with the center”. “We must put the country before the party,” continues the deputy for Eure. “Whoever does this will ultimately help their party. If we want the left to be heard, it must be leader and responsible, with personalities who devote themselves to the country.”
When the bullets whistle between the rebels and the socialists, the Ecologists watch them pass. When asked, the boss of the Green House Marine Tondelier refuses to comment on the umpteenth crisis situation within the NFP. She says she prefers to talk “in substance”, yet brushes aside any conversation about Ugo Bernalicis’ proposed text. As for the conditions of non-censorship, proposed by the socialists and approved by the communists, the leader of the ecologists Cyrielle Chatelain doubts this “top-down logic”. “There is this idea that the government would decide and that parliamentarians would negotiate this non-censorship based on the government’s choices. Conversely, we must move to a logic where it is up to the Assembly to provoke the initiative political”, she explains, without denying the initiative of the socialist Boris Vallaud. A half goat, half cabbage position in the name of union, a rule from which environmentalists do not deviate. “The left and the Greens must remain united: it is the role of environmentalists to maintain the position of the immense majority of voters and sympathizers on our side,” warns Cyrielle Chatelain. Who warns his comrades: “We must not forget that our basic base is 193 deputies if we wish to govern, and then expand it to find majorities.” Misery to the first deserter.
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