“We are still in the campaign”. With an internal plebiscite in January, Fabien Roussel opened in a position of strength the 39th congress of the French Communist Party, this Friday, in Marseille. “It is the pride of the PCF to fully play its role in this period. It is also our responsibility to work for a political outcome,” he said. One after the presidential election, the communist has not changed. Between provocations and tackles at Nupes, Fabien Roussel continues to trace his furrow on the left.
“What he does is useful”
This is the paradox and the strength of Fabien Roussel: the communist candidate has, by the very admission of his opponents, managed a fine presidential campaign, making it possible to raise the moribund red flag of the party. To the point of making people forget his starving score of 2.28% obtained in April 2022. “He was narrowly and unexpectedly elected to lead the party in 2018. But since then he has allowed the PCF to have an advertisement that he no longer had for a long time. He himself has acquired a positive image in public opinion, and places himself at the top of the basket of political figures”, analyzes Roger Martelli, historian of communism and former member of the party leadership.
In recent months, the elected representative of the North has made a “tour of France” without changing the recipe: overflowing media activity, banter and good words, singular line on the left, strewn here and there with controversies… Fabien Roussel seems to take pleasure in testing the limits of his comrades on security, secularism, allowances and “work value”. And even gastronomy or hunting.
“He has a modern way of communicating, which works through questioning or provocation. He has given himself the vocation of shaking up the left and its certainties, that’s what people like, ”notes the former socialist Emmanuel Maurel, who supported him in the presidential election. “What he is doing is useful. If we want to win next time, we have to seek out the abstentionists, the working classes tempted by the RN, in the industrial or post-industrial departments, far from the big cities and the suburbs, ”adds the Republican and Socialist Left MEP. (GRS).
“He does not want to be the second of Mélenchon”
This desire to win back the working classes is not isolated on the left, and joins the strategy of François Ruffin (LFI) or Arnaud Montebourg (ex-PS). It is therefore rather the national ambition of the boss of the Communists who is coming up against more and more the Nupes and its tutelary figure, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. This week again, Fabien Roussel has, for the umpteenth time, irritated the rebellious tribune and his allies, judging the Nupes “outdated”, and proposing to widen it to the center-left, to the former Prime Minister of François Hollande Bernard Cazeneuve. “I saw an appetite for a new left and which is not limited to Jean-Luc Mélenchon”, he summarizes in the Express.
LFI deputy Alexis Corbière called on him “to stop regularly denigrating” the left-wing coalition. “By attacking it, with no other objective than to advance their little people, the Cazeneuve, Delga, Hidalgo, Roussel & company have clearly chosen their side. He is not the one on the left”, also castigated his rebellious colleague Danièle Obono. To Manuel Bompard, the coordinator of LFI, who asked the Communists to “clarify” their position, Fabien Roussel answered this Friday without detour: “Mind your own business (…) No one will dictate to the Communists what they must vote, do and choose”.
If the episode caused a stir within the Communist Party, Fabien Roussel should be easily re-elected national secretary at the end of the congress on Monday. A step towards what he hopes will be his national destiny. “Fabien doesn’t want to be Mélenchon’s second and won’t be. He continues to make this singular voice heard to become the essential figure on the left, ”wants to believe one of the supporters. In an Ifop poll for the newspaper Humanity published this Friday, 54% of respondents consider it sympathetic and 45% believe that it modernizes the party.
On the front line in the battle against pension reform, the former presidential candidate has even become the personality of the left the most appreciated by all French people in several polls these last months. But the voting intentions in his favor remain far, very far from those going to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “The image does not make the vote. The PCF remains in recent years in very low electoral waters, between 2 and 3%. Its local base has withered, and the number of activists, at 40,000, remains significant but declining, ”says Roger Martelli. “Fabien Roussel is trying to free the PCF from dependence on LFI, at the risk of weakening the Nupes and therefore the left,” he said. Partly raised, the red flag has not finished talking.