2023-05-03 10:30:13
Lhe hour of assessment has not officially come, but the examination of conscience is essential. A year after its creation, the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) has not been able to capitalize on the reunification of the lefts initiated by Jean-Luc Mélenchon nor on the social movement which marks the first year of the new five-year term of Emanuel Macron. Unlike the intersyndicale, which was able to channel the protest against the pension reform from start to finish by constantly keeping public opinion on its side, the parliamentary left gave the spectacle of impotence and above all of excess. , unwittingly serving the interests of Marine Le Pen, quick to position herself as the guarantor of order in the face of the disorder in the street and the heckling in the National Assembly Chamber.
The too strong submission of the left to the dominant group, La France insoumise (LFI), and the personal role played by Jean-Luc Mélenchon are at stake. Three times candidate for the presidential election but never qualified for the second round, the former Trotskyist has won a special place in the French political landscape. He has become the man capable of carrying the colors of the left high, but not the one who can guarantee him to one day cross the gates of power. The long marathon he ran after his break with the Socialist Party in 2008 enabled him to earn his stripes as a leader by flattering, through his words, the aspiration for change of a left which, in the midst of global warming , dream of revolution.
Each time we believed him to be in difficulty, he was able to bounce back, like his mentor François Mitterrand, whose name he constantly invokes to better castigate ” the treason “ of those who claimed to succeed him. This time, however, his aura is affected because if he becomes, through his excesses, one of those who provide fuel to the president of the National Rally group in the Assembly, it is the entire left that will find itself embarked on the shipwreck.
Positioning and power struggles
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s behavior in the pension dispute is all the more striking as none of his predictions have come true: young people have not taken to the streets in droves; the Ve Republic has not been brought down; the calls to « l’insurrection » gave no evidence. If the anger of the French is indisputable, it does not lead, for the moment, to the collapse of the central bloc on which the “rebellious” table to lead to a direct confrontation with Marine Le Pen from which he hopes to emerge a winner. On the contrary: the more radical it becomes, the more it asserts itself.
The malaise is perceptible within La France insoumise where the leader, over the months, has lost his aura. First, he is no longer a deputy. Then, it no longer aggregates, giving on the contrary the impression of falling back on a close guard against potential competitors. François Ruffin has obviously become one of the most serious. With his experience, the deputy of the Somme dreams of rebuilding a social left capable of bringing together LFI to the center.
The entire history of the left has been marked by struggles for position and power. The one that is looming, however, takes place in a particular context: the push of the extreme right. To hope to counter it, the left must remain united. To hope to remain united, it must find the means to bring all its sensitivities to life and work together. Until now, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has been a staunch opponent of pluralism, which he associates with inefficiency and dilution. Today, he must release some slack except to appear as the gravedigger of what he has managed to build.
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