Historic handshake.
Sunday May 1 on the Place de la République, opposite the Mon Coco brewery, Olivier Faure and Jean-Luc Mélenchon met.
The agreement between the rebels, the ecologists, the socialists and the communists was then about to be tied for the legislative elections.
It was to be overnight from Sunday to Monday with possible readjustments on Monday before an official highlight on Tuesday May 3, the anniversary of the Popular Front of 1936.
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In 2017, the leader of the Insoumis had failed to rally the left after procrastinating and dragging his feet in clearly opposing Marine Le Pen after the first round.
He then tried, in vain, to play the street against the ballot box in the fall.
For his third and last presidential campaign, if he failed with 400,000 votes before the second round, against Marine Le Pen, he very skilfully played unity and the dynamic on the left by placing himself as a recourse against the leader of the State for the
"third round"
of June, in the legislative elections.
We will not lend ourselves to an endless comedy that would ridicule us in front of the eyes of thousands of people who say: “But what are you doing?”
Jean-Luc Melenchon
Can Jean-Luc Mélenchon, with his partners, seriously run for the 289 constituencies necessary to take the lead of a majority coalition and win in Matignon?
The case is very far from done.
There will be dissent, at least among socialists.
But it places in any case the camp of the left in a situation of main opponent to Emmanuel Macron.
In the early afternoon on the Place de la République, surrounded by white-hot Insoumis activists who felt the time of changeover was coming after the 21.95% of April 10, Jean-Luc Mélenchon raised the atmosphere.
"
We are a few millimeters away from hearing each other
,
" he said.
It going!
Rest assured that we are doing everything in our power to make it happen!”
He too confirmed it to his troops.
“These discussions, normally, should end tonight.
Because if it doesn't end tonight, that means it will never end.
So we won't lend ourselves to an endless comedy that would ridicule us in front of the eyes of thousands of people who say: 'What are you really doing?
“A huge hope”
Last little bit of pressure towards the Communists while Fabien Roussel, their national secretary, was the only party leader absent from the place.
The latter, deputy of the North, marched Sunday morning in Valenciennes.
"The Communists are a bit sniffy, but it's going to be fine",
ironically a territorial executive of the party present on his side at the Republic.
There is
"nothing insurmountable anymore",
confirmed Julien Bayou not far from the Insoumis, while the union and political processions formed under the sun, in a smell of grilled merguez sausages.
"You have to measure the extent to which we are trying to do in a few days what has not been possible to do for years, or even never..."
Not wanting to give the impression of selling off heavy program disagreements - therefore those having punctuated the presidential campaign, leaving NATO or Europe in the lead -, Julien Bayou insisted on underlining the developments of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the Insoumis.
“We want to reorient the European project and not get out of it,
” he said, on behalf of everyone.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon has understood that, in an agreement, you have to be able to address the fears and misunderstandings of others…”
It's an immense hope that is born, and it's great
Olivier Faure
When Olivier Faure arrived on the square, he went to the meeting point of the ecologists.
But the first secretary of the PS missed Julien Bayou by a few minutes, left to join the negotiators.
The deputy of Seine-et-Marne, accompanied by the handful of management executives who built the agreement with him, did not disassemble, smiling and relaxed.
Olivier Faure greeted the ecologist Sandrine Rousseau, also present.
It was far, this Sunday, the time when, in March 2018, during a march of railway workers against the reform of the SNCF, the first socialist secretary was exfiltrated from a parade, threatened by demonstrators.
His party was then associated with the five-year term of François Hollande.
"It's a huge hope that is born, and it's great,"
said Faure.