The Socialists meet from Friday in Marseille for the famous PS congress, in a deleterious atmosphere, the disputed re-election of Olivier Faure as first secretary leaving the party fractured. Already weakened by the historic failure of its presidential candidate Anne Hidalgo (1.7%), the PS has been torn apart since the vote of the members to choose a leader.
Each side claimed victory, tight, then a committee for checking the results, meeting last weekend, placed the outgoing first secretary Olivier Faure in the lead with 51.09%, ahead of his rival the mayor of Rouen Nicolas Mayer- Nightingale (48.91%). Unacceptable, claims the latter who demands a recount and denounces “fraud and irregularities”, according to him, punishable by “prison”.
“They dispute the results to allow the idea that there is a vacuum to settle” and create a blockage at the Marseille congress, deplores the entourage of the first secretary. “It is the first time that there has been a congress whose strategic dimension is so obvious since Epinay”, in 1971, which had allowed François Mitterrand to become first secretary of the party on a line of union of the left, esteemed by AFP Olivier Faure.
“Allied but not aligned”
Fifty-two years later, the challenge is still to combine the forces of the left, but this time within the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes). Olivier Faure, architect of this alliance forged in May 2022 with La France insoumise, EELV and the PCF, defends this agreement which has allowed the PS to keep a group of around thirty deputies in the Assembly, but to the detriment of many disappointed socialists.
Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol does not hide his reluctance towards the rebellious France of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. And, even if he assures that he does not want to leave Nupes, his objective is to modify it, so that the PS is “ally but not aligned”. In the entourage of Olivier Faure, it is considered that the mayor of Rouen, hitherto unknown to party authorities, is “the ram that some use to break down the doors of management”.
In their sights, Anne Hidalgo, who “tries to wash away the affront of the presidential election” and Carole Delga, president of the Occitanie region, hostile to Nupes, and who wants to “weaken the management and prevent any possible outbreak” from here the next presidential election, according to those close to the first secretary.