The issue has gradually gained importance since Monday. In addition to the issue of a possible left-wing Prime Minister, in what configurations will the elected representatives of the New Popular Front have to sit within the hemicycle? The 577 deputies who make up the National Assembly have until next Thursday, July 18, to announce their attachment to a parliamentary group. While negotiations continue and the Socialist Party seeks to banish the bad memories of the previous term, hoping to sweep away the rebellious hegemony, now the rest of the left is trying to play its part in turn.
“We don’t want to lock the left into a Hollande-Mélenchon debate”
On Tuesday afternoon, the re-elected Insoumis dissidents – and self-renamed “the insurgents” – lit the fuse. “As you know, the break between us and La France Insoumise is complete. We will not sit in the Insoumis group,” they wrote in a joint message Alexis Corbière, Clémentine Autain, Danielle Simonnet, Hendrik Davi and François Ruffin. “Deeply attached to the unitary dynamic and the NFP rich in its diversity, we aspire to sit in a new group, associating ecologists, communists, members of Génération. s and us.” The letter is addressed directly to the leader of the communists André Chassaigne, and to the boss of the green parliamentarians Cyrielle Châtelain. “We wanted the creation of a large group of the New Popular Front: the idea was not taken up. So we put this proposal on the table,” explains Hendrik Davi, the outgoing Insoumis, not reinvested by La France insoumise, reelected in Bouches-du-Rhône. The five elected officials, former close associates of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, should meet the two group presidents in the coming days. “It will be settled by Thursday evening,” hopes one of the supporters of this union.
Acting on the overtaking within the parliamentary ecologist pole? Among the troops of Marine Tondelier and Génération. s, the idea goes back to the inter-round. Some saw in the election of the dissident Insoumis the opportunity to flourish their group with new labels, albeit heterogeneous ones. On Monday, during their first group meeting, the ecologists seriously discussed this option again. Among them, the elected representatives of Benoît Hamon’s micro-party are unanimously in favor of opening up. “I think that we need a force between LFI and the PS, resolutely left-wing ecologist, united and democratic in its operation, affirms Benjamin Lucas, deputy of Yvelines. “Many people do not want to limit the debate on the left to a Hollande-Mélenchon duality. This group can be a link,” he wants to believe. A link, or an inhibitor of hegemony, while the PS and the Insoumis are fighting to be the most numerous on the left? “We have a card to play to strengthen what we are,” the parliamentarian assumes. Obtain, in short, a good forty deputies.
“It wasn’t really what was planned”
“The real reason is that Cyrielle Chatelain was afraid that Génération. s would leave with Ruffin and the other Insoumis by creating another group of their own. If she is in favor of this idea, it is above all to keep them,” argues a malicious tongue. “There has never been any difficulty in working with the environmentalists,” they retort in the small group.
In the French Communist Party, which has had a group since the middle of the 20th century, the idea of merging their troops into a single entity is mostly met with caution. “That wasn’t really what was planned,” laments a strategist from the red house. Especially since the question of their survival as a parliamentary structure seems to be raised, while some overseas – regulars in the Democratic and Republican Left group – threaten to disperse into various versions to port. André Chassaigne, the leader of the communist deputies who has not yet spoken, will try to set the record straight at the group meeting on Wednesday, July 10. However, if it is a union of circumstances, a single banner uniting environmentalists and communists may be surprising, given the fundamental differences between the two parties, highlighted during the last European elections. “In 1997, the environmental group included left-wing radicals and Chevenementists,” Benjamin Lucas puts into perspective. “We are capable of creating the New Popular Front, we must be capable of making people with different positions coexist.”
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