It could have been an evening of reckoning. At the end of a week of strong turbulence at La France insoumise (LFI), Jean-Luc Mélenchon held a meeting in Saint-Etienne on Friday December 16, barely a few hours after the publication of the interview in Monde by Alexis Corbière, critic of the reorganization of the movement. But the former deputy of Bouches-du-Rhône does not like to be where he is expected. His speech, almost silent on the internal debates, revived his great classics, between scenes of picketing and development on inflation, quote from Michel-Edouard Leclerc in support.
However, we could read there, in the background, some elements on the current crisis at LFI. “I said that I was withdrawing and not retreating, I was trying to imagine what the role could consist of and I couldn’t find… I found, I am the lightning rod for all the hatred of our adversaries, and sometimes of all the ambitions of our friends”, began the former socialist senator. He also greeted the member of the Loire who welcomed him, Andrée Taurinya, “confirmed activist, tenacious patient” : “You know like me what it is to build a force, to snatch it from nothingness. » As a response to attempts at deconstruction.
Targeted movement from all sides
In the game of clues, always, he praised the work of four elected officials, three in the European Parliament – Manon Aubry, his colleague Leïla Chaibi, who had estimated, Friday, December 9, that the reorganization of the movement returned « presque » to one « purge », and Younous Omarjee -, and finally Alexis Corbière, who brought the project of increasing the minimum wage to 1,600 euros net to the National Assembly. Without ever pronouncing the name of Adrien Quatennens – the deputy from the North is sentenced to a four-month suspended prison sentence for domestic violence – he evoked an episode which has nothing to do with it, but nevertheless resonates strangely in its conclusion: the forgiveness that he had granted, in 2021, to one of the defendants of the trial of the extreme right-wing group OAS, which had counted him as a target. “Whoever falls once must have the possibility of rehabilitating themselves, that’s the Republican conception of fault, those who have fallen must be able to rehabilitate themselves through their behavior”he said.
The tribune painted the portrait of an insubordinate France targeted from all sides, by the far right first, in view of the recent violent actions of identity groups targeting activists and deputies of LFI. By the liberal camp and the “comments” of the press on the other, these “forces of despair that hope for resignation”. As for the pension reform and the battle that opens in January, Jean-Luc Mélenchon shares almost in every way the analysis made by Alexis Corbière: “The first round, it starts there with the battle for pensions. For my part, this is the seventh reform I would face”did he declare. “You must oppose it, with all your might, if you are unionized with the union, if you are not, with your mass political organization, the Nupes [Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociale], and the “rebellious”, this precious tool that you have! » A tool with a very uncertain future these days.