Socialist Party: a congress in Marseille to overcome divisions
The 80th congress of the Socialist Party is being held from today until Sunday in Marseilles in a context of high tension after the election of the first secretary last week. Olivier Faure’s victory is contested by Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol. But beyond governance, it is the role that the PS wants to play on the left and its national ambition that are at stake.
Marseille, the city of Gaston Defferre, will it be added to the blacklist of cities where the Socialist Party tore itself apart, like Rennes in 1990 or Reims in 2008? Or will Marseille, which was able to invent a victorious spring in Marseilles during the last municipal elections to take over the municipality on the right, be the city of reconciliation and rebound? At a time when the 80th congress of the Socialist Party opens this morning for three days, it is impossible to answer this question as the tensions that run through the political formation have remained strong since the rowdy election of the first secretary last Thursday. Between the teams of the two finalists, that of the outgoing Olivier Faure, deputy of Seine-et-Marne, and that of the mayor of Rouen, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, the time is, indeed, still not for the peace pipe , each claiming camp won the vote of the 23,759 militants who expressed themselves on January 19 and accused the other of stealing victory from them.
An usher at the party headquarters
Olivier Faure was however confirmed Sunday winner of the vote of the members, with 51.09% of the votes against 48.91% for Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, at the end of a commission of verification of which the mayor of Rouen disputes the work.
On Monday, Olivier Faure proposed that Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol and Hélène Geoffroy – whose motions received 30.51% and 20.34% of the vote respectively in the first round on February 12 – join the management as first assistant secretaries with “strong responsibilities” – including the head of the list for the Europeans of 2024 for the mayor of Rouen. Refusal of requirements.
At the same time, on Monday, the PS management had the results validated at party headquarters by a bailiff. The latter, who recovered the results of each department between “an Excel table of the results of the verification commission” and a document grouping “all the minutes drawn up by each federation” at the end of the vote, returned his report on Wednesday. “I note that all the elements appearing in one find a concordance in the other”, writes the bailiff.
But this official observation did not provide any information on the resolution of the conflict and the congress which opens this Friday therefore promises to be very uncertain, to the greatest desolation of the militants, party executives and tenors who, at the Like former Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, deploring to see the PS in a “pathetic situation”.
A “coherent and unitary” party
To get out of it, some have mentioned the possibility of forming a collegiate management on the basis of the results of the first round which are not disputed. But how to reconcile the position radically anti-Nupes of Hélène Geoffroy with that requested favorable to the alliance of the left LFI-PCF-EELV-PS negotiated by Olivier Faure; an alliance which allowed the party to save its deputies during the last legislative elections at the cost of the bitterness of the socialists who had to give up their places, in particular for rebellious candidates? A collegial direction therefore seems perilous, but not impossible, the socialist party having made a specialty in the past of carrying out improbable “syntheses” of different motions to arrive at building a direction…
With the approach of the congress, however, the tone has already dropped a notch since Monday. Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol no longer claims victory but that “democracy be respected”. Olivier Faure no longer speaks of “the clear and net results” brandished in his interview with the JDD which had exacerbated the tensions, but of “a clear but narrow victory”. Obviously, in progress.
“I am the first secretary you have chosen. I share your anger at this crisis which puts us in danger as we turn the corner. I hear your deep disgust when the party is presented as a world of fraud and irregularities,” Olivier Faure said yesterday, addressing activists, ruling out any new votes and calling for a “coherent and unitary” party, rather as “collection of baronies”.
What does the PS want to be?
The conflict could in any case find its solution on Saturday morning with the vote of the delegates of the congress, elected by their federation, who must ratify the results of the ballot. The Faure teams would have the majority with, according to their count, 100 federations against 80… Figures disputed by the Mayer-Rossignol teams. On Wednesday, around fifty federal secretaries of the Socialist Party, as well as around 300 section secretaries, were called in an open letter to “recognize” the election of Olivier Faure. “At a time when the Socialist Party is marching with all the trade union, citizen and political forces of the left and environmentalists against the pension reform project […] we socialists are tearing ourselves apart in the eyes of the whole of France in a disastrous power struggle. »
Because the paradox for the PS is that this new war of the roses intervenes more on the form than on the bottom – even if there are nuances – as underlined it the deputy Valérie Rabault. The party of Jaurès, which gave two presidents to the Fifth Republic – and which is not going to die contrary to what some prophesy – finally finds itself faced with two choices which have always marked its history when it comes to exercising the power: does it want to be content with being a party which manages the territories, cities, departments and regions, with powerful barons who often do good work, or does it also want to be a party of government capable again to bring together the entire left to offer the French a clear alternation with macronism in 2027 with a real project for progress? The Marseilles congress will have to provide part of the answer and justify or not a long work of ideological rearmament. In Marseille for the PS, it’s make or break…