A month after the difficult congress of Marseille, the truce concluded between the first secretary Olivier Faure and the number 2 Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol was shattered at the first national council, this Saturday, recording the division of the party between pro and anti-Nupes.
In question, the vote of a resolution confirming the support of the Socialist Party for the outgoing LFI-Nupes deputy Bénédicte Taurine in the partial legislative of Ariège.
The National Council recorded this support by 156 votes for and 135 against, or 21 votes apart.
But as they had promised, the first secretary delegate Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol and the supporters of his current voted against this choice defended by the First secretary Olivier Faure within the framework of the agreement of left Nupes concluded last May with LFI , EELV and the PCF, preferring to support a dissident PS candidate, Martine Froger.
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pros and cons
Those close to Olivier Faure had let it be known that no post of national secretary would be granted to those who would choose to support the dissident socialist, arguing that there could not be two different political lines.
Consequence: if Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, who does not hide his reluctance vis-à-vis LFI, remains first deputy secretary, as decided at the Marseille Congress, he is the only representative of his current within the national management.
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This vote ratified the division of the party between pro and anti-Nupes, a month after the Marseille congress, where Olivier Faure and Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol disputed victory for several days, with accusations of fraud.
The two currents had finally reached an agreement to integrate the management together.
It only lasted just over a month.
“
In one direction, we have to indicate precisely the same direction
”, justified Olivier Faure in his closing speech.
“
I don't want it to be said that there is a management that doesn't know where it is going
,” he explained.
But “
the door is always open
”, he assured, while justifying the support for the LFI deputy by the need
to “honor the signature
” of the PS in the Nupes agreement.
"Purge"
The mayor of Rouen Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol for his part deplored "
a coup de force
".
“
Does the leadership wish to bring together or divide and make bloc against bloc?
“, he wondered in front of the press.
Paris elected official Lamia El Aaraje, one of her relatives, notably criticized the LFI candidate for being "
anti-vax
" and for having signed a communist resolution saying "
that Israel is an apartheid state
".
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For Mr. Mayer-Rossignol, the composition of the new national secretariat, which has a hundred members "
exclusively from the sensibility
" of Olivier Faure, resembles "
a purge
" and a "
Mexican army
".
Affirming that he would continue to "
be a free man who carries (the) socialist convictions
" and to support the dissident PS candidate from Ariège, he accused Olivier Faure of having "
broken the Marseille agreement
".
"
But it is he who breaks the agreement
", since he had undertaken in Marseille to carry the common line resulting from the congress and the decisions of the authorities, replied the national secretary Pierre Jouvet, a close friend of Olivier Faure .
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"
To lead the party, we could not have two lines, two voices
," insisted Mr. Jouvet to AFP.
“
It is a clarity that was necessary and requested by the militants
”.
The supporters of the 3rd current of the party, that of the mayor of Vaulx-en-Velin Hélène Geoffroy, very hostile to Nupes, who during the congress had chosen not to integrate the direction, also voted without surprise against the support for MP LFI-Nupes.
The subject was scrutinized even beyond the party.
In a letter in February, the coordinator of LFI Manuel Bompard, had thus enjoined all the partners of the Nupes, and in particular the PS, to respect the agreement reached in the legislative elections on this constituency.