From our special correspondent in Brétigny-sur-Orge (Essonne)
He’s like that, Fabien Roussel. Nature painting. A joke, some witticisms, some bad words. In front of the journalists (“I was asked my opinion on the Elysée IPA, I told myself that Macron had released the beers, but no, it was the Large-Scale Political Initiative!”) as well as in the aisles of the Fête de L’Humanité, which opened on Friday. The communist leader makes big gestures, gives real handshakes, kisses greedily… We are told that this is not comedy, that it is natural. But organized: before his first stroll through the aisles of the Festival, Roussel plugs in his lavalier microphone so that the party cameras don’t miss a beat. Including when the manager of a vegan stand at the Festival comes to call out to him: “Oh I love it! », replies Roussel, still very much in control of himself.
No one is surprised anymore: all this is part of Fabien Roussel’s political identity. More surprising is his back-to-school outing asking the French to “take action” if the government does not act very quickly on inflation. The deputy from the North thus called for people to gather in front of the prefectures and why not “invade them”, just like shopping centers or gas stations. As after each shocking statement, Fabien Roussel put things into perspective, calling for peaceful gatherings. Is the left-wing candidate preferred by the right – and part of the left too, let’s not caricature – because he is supposedly more respectable or more republican than Jean-Luc Mélenchon, blurring his image?
“I listen to people! »
When asked if there is a change in strategy, Fabien Roussel evades. “I don’t know, when I was a young communist I was already like that…” We are still far from Roussel Fabien who for months continued to distance himself from the movementist strategy of LFI. “I listen to people! We must be bearers of their anger and proposals. ” Wow ! Very literally what rebellious France keeps saying to justify its often noisy and thunderous strategy, on pension reform but not only. “Yes, we must raise our voice and speak clearly,” said the PCF boss during his speech this Saturday morning at the Huma Festival. A rallying to LFI’s “we are here” strategy?
Manuel Bompard, the coordinator of the Mélenchonist movement, described it this way a few months ago: “As soon as we have an opportunity, we try to create the conditions for mobilization. Sometimes there are 300 of us, sometimes three million, but we are there. » In the entourage of the national communist secretary obviously, we deny: “The rebels, they never do that on the social question. That’s what we wanted, to put social issues back at the heart of the back-to-school season. » And the campaign against the high cost of living for rebels last fall, with the march of October 16, criticized in particular by the communists and to which they only paid lip service? At the time, it was not up to the parties to create social mobilizations… “No, but it wasn’t quite the same thing,” says the same close friend of the communist.
Hard points at all levels
If Fabien Roussel is no longer “the-respectable-left-guy-not-like-Mélenchon”, what does he have left? In the PCF we believe that this is no longer really the subject: its notoriety is established, that there is no longer any need to seek a divide with the rest of the left, but with the government, the right and the extreme right . Of course, in his speech Fabien Roussel attacked the government very head-on: it is still in his job description. The day before, in front of journalists, the communist leader had continued to insist heavily on the few programmatic differences with the rest of the left. And there, everything is a “hard point”, “there are no possible compromises”: on the responses to the revolts in the suburbs, in particular. On nuclear power, especially.
That the communists – who nevertheless ran two presidential campaigns with Mélenchon despite this difference that is now insurmountable – are polarizing on nuclear power is nothing new. But faced with the criticisms which make him the divider of the left against the extreme right, we feel that Fabien Roussel is trying to give more depth to the subject: nuclear power is low-cost energy, an energy at low prices, it’s more purchasing power, more purchasing power, it’s a way of fighting against the vote for Marine Le Pen. Slight problem: Marine Le Pen is also ultra pro-nuclear.
What differences?
Bigger problem: what are the other real programmatic differences with the rest of the left? On Europe, with the PS and EELV, more Europhile or even federalist, we see clearly. But with the rebels, with whom will the communist MEPs – if there are any – sit? Supported by Young People of the Nupes (rebellious, socialists, ecologists, Generations, but not communists), who demand unity in the Europeans, Fabien Roussel called for respecting differences, including strategic ones, but had a lot of difficulty on the bottom.
In front of one of the young activists, who reminded him that for ten years he had shared the same program as Jean-Luc Mélenchon with the Left Front, that he had signed the shared program of Nupes for the 2022 legislative elections and that in basically, they agree on the essentials, the boss of the communists was content to explain that he did not have the same priorities. Fabien Roussel may constantly assure that he puts “the project, the ideas forward”, it nevertheless quickly becomes apparent that they are often the same as the others on the left.