For more than a year, La France Insoumise has been in the grip of a latent crisis concerning its “internal democracy”.
After the ouster of several Mélenchonist figures (Raquel Garrido, Clémentine Autain, François Ruffin, Alexis Corbière), in December 2022, from the leadership of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's movement, criticism increased over the absence of democratic frameworks in the within LFI.
And they are now extending to the activist base of the movement.
Disputes that Jean-Luc Mélenchon, member of the national “coordination” of LFI, has always brushed aside.
Annoyed at not having a voice, activists who signed an Appeal for the Sixth Republic during the year 2023, decided to take the next step by organizing a citizens' assembly with the aim of proposing a " reform” of the internal functioning of LFI.
It will be held on Saturday February 10 in Gagny, in Seine-Saint-Denis, in the constituency of a socialist MP, Fatiha Keloua Hachi.
“For more than a year, we have tried to contribute to the internal debate of the movement through open letters and press releases, but it has not been possible.
We were ignored.
We therefore chose another method to make ourselves heard,” they explain.
They specify that they are organizing "in complete independence from the personalities of the movement", while the LFI deputy Raquel Garrido, one of the figures of the internal protest, is already subject to a sanction from her group. The national assembly.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for his part, suggested last week to these “rebels” to leave his movement.
“If you don't agree with anything and see me as a tyrant, what are you still doing here?
I left the PS when I disagreed,” he told Le Figaro.
“We activists of rebellious France are sounding the alarm”
“We, activists of France Insoumise, are sounding the alarm.
We are indeed going through a real internal crisis linked to the
repeated
vertical decisions that we are subject to: for example, from the creation of the Popular Union to the creation of Nupes, at no time have we been consulted.
Who joins these parliaments?
Who becomes president?
Who decides on their creations and their role?
We don’t know…” denounced these activists in their Appeal.
They claim “450 signatories”.
During this citizens' assembly, through speeches organized by theme, these critical rebel activists will present their "lived experience of activism at LFI, their analysis of the functioning of the movement, its structures".
As well as “the problem of exclusions, which is current, will be raised by testimonies”, they underline.
In November, it was the LFI regional advisor, Julien Poix, who announced his departure from the movement, denouncing the “lack of internal democracy”.
This day will end with “a reform proposal that we will submit to all our LFI comrades, and beyond that to all Common Future activists.
» And a call to organize a “Convention” of the movement.
“This time, the debate will be open to LFI.
And, like Jean-Luc Mélenchon, we have total faith in the self-organizing capacity of our people,” they scath in a nod to the words of the Insoumis leader.
Since 2018, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has avoided the structuring of “currents” – which are prohibited – within his movement and is annoyed by attempts at internal “democracy”.
“The next person who utters this word in front of me, I will exterminate him”, he kindly threatened a relative in 2018, report Laurent Mauduit and Denis Sieffert, in their recent work “Trotskyism, secret stories, from Lambert to Mélenchon” (editions Les Little Mornings, 2024).