It is the hour of truth for the Communist Party. From this Friday, May 7 and until Sunday, May 9, its 50,000 members are called to the polls to decide on their strategy for 2022. They are asked two questions: should a Communist candidacy be registered now for the presidential election or wait for the fall? And which candidate to choose? The suspense is thin: last month, a thousand party executives gathered in a national conference validated the first option and named their number one, Fabien Roussel, by 74% of the vote, to wear their colors, leaving only crumbs for the other two candidates. to the candidacy, unknown to the general public.
Are activists going to confirm the trend?
For Communist Party spokesperson Ian Brossat, there is little doubt.
“I think they will provide massive support to Fabien Roussel,” he predicts.
And to defend the line of defense of the communist "identity" on which the national secretary of the PCF was elected at the head of the party in November 2018. "Not to participate in the presidential election is, in fact, to disappear from the political landscape.
The Communists must address themselves to the popular and working-class electorate that the left has abandoned.
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Mélenchon calls for "communist conscience"
Even among opponents of an independent candidacy, there is little hope of seeing the base disavow its executives, as at the end of 2016, when the activists voted for support for Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “It would be a divine surprise, but I do not believe it, loose Gilles Poux, mayor (PCF) of La Courneuve (Seine-Saint-Denis), supporter of an alliance with the rebellious leader. Unfortunately, the worst choice is likely to come out: it is suicidal for the movement and a first-class burial for the values of social transformation that we carry ”. The elected fears an anecdotal score, like that achieved in 2007 by Marie-George Buffet, who had gleaned only 1.93% of the votes.
During the next two presidential elections, in 2012 and 2017, the PCF supported Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Sensing the danger coming for several months and in cold with Fabien Roussel, the leader of rebellious France published Tuesday on Facebook a message of the last chance addressed to the communist militants. "I appeal to the communist conscience with which I have campaigned so many times in the struggles" he launches solemnly. Recognizing that “mistakes were made”, the LFI candidate proposed to the Communists a union accompanied by a “legislative electoral agreement before the presidential elections”. Finally, he warns them against "the serious consequences" of a single PCF rider. In this case, he warns, "maintaining the electoral preeminence of the popular pole of rupture will obviously be more difficult".