She left her competitor no chance. Emma Rafowicz, close to the first secretary of the PS Olivier Faure, was re-elected this Sunday at the head of the Young Socialists, during the Congress of the movement in Lille. She obtained 85.8% of the vote, against Arthur Moinet.
This 27-year-old elected representative from Paris is in the line of Olivier Faure, supporter of the Nupes agreement, concluded in May 2022 with LFI, EELV and the PCF. She had carried the latter’s motion to become first federal secretary of the Paris federation, but was beaten by Lamia El Aaraje.
On Friday, his national action plan (PAN, a sort of orientation text), came well ahead of the vote of the federations with 76.4% of the votes, ahead of those of his two competitors, Arthur Moinet (14.6% ) and Cédric Ardouin (9%).
The deputy mayor of the 11th arrondissement of Paris, where she is in charge of culture, crafts and heritage, is a fan of politics: she joined the Young Socialist Movement at the age of 16. Then she took the reins in 2017, before being re-elected in May 2022.
She has worked to reorganize a movement once entangled in cases of harassment and sexual assault, and to attract new members. This mission was a success: the Young Socialists movement is booming, going from 150 members the day after François Hollande’s five-year term to 4,000 claimed at the start of 2023, underlines Le Figaroboosted by the Nupes effect.
She wants to “de-bourgeoisize our organization” and that women have “power”, she claimed in her speech on Sunday. Emma Rafowicz regrets that she can still be described by some as “an object surrounded by decision-making men”.
Initially “shy”
Saturday on the first day of the Congress of Young Socialists, Olivier Faure had greeted a young woman at the start “shy”, but who has made her way. And whose motion “has garnered a majority of which I myself would still dream”. Olivier Faure was re-elected with difficulty as head of the PS last January, after a stormy congress, which saw the Socialists split between pro and anti-Nupes.
“It is the political line of ecological socialism that has been chosen,” explained the Young Socialists movement in a press release after the vote on its orientation text.
Emma Rafowicz was warmly congratulated on social networks by many party figures, including Patrick Kanner, former minister and senator, or Johanna Rolland, mayor of Nantes.