Socialist leader rejects Mélenchon as Popular Front candidate for prime minister
The New Popular Front (NFP), which brings together the parties of the French left, is to nominate a candidate for prime minister this week to be appointed and govern with his own programme and not in coalition with the outgoing majority of President Emmanuel Macron. “This week we have to be able to prepare a candidacy,” stressed on Monday the first secretary of the Socialist Party (PS), Olivier Faure, who insisted that Macron must recognise that “he has been defeated” in the legislative elections of June 30 and July 7.
In an interview with France Info, Faure declined to comment on who might be prime minister, other than to exclude the leader of La France Insoumise (LFI), Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and to point out that he will have to “be able to dialogue with the outside world” because the NFP’s relative majority will have to be “widened.”
The left-wing coalition comprising the LFI, the PS, the Ecologists and the French Communist Party (PCF) became the leading political bloc in the general elections with around 182 seats out of a total of 577, i.e. far from the 289 needed for an absolute majority.
The bloc of parties that supported Macron’s outgoing government came second with around 168 seats (they had 250 in the last National Assembly), while Marine Le Pen’s far right, despite making the biggest gains of all the groups, has to be content with 143 seats (they had 89).
LFI MP Manuel Bompard, who is one of Mélenchon’s lieutenants, insisted that in Sunday’s vote there were “losers” who were “Macronism and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally” (RN), while the NFP “is the first political party in the National Assembly, the one that must govern.” In another interview with France 2, Bombard confirmed that discussions would continue on Monday between the parties in the left-wing coalition that would propose “a method and a name” for a prime minister to implement their programme because “we have to respect the word we have given to the voters.” Asked how they would implement this programme without having a majority to approve it in Parliament, the LFI MP recalled that Macron’s outgoing government did not have an absolute majority either.
On this point, Faure noted that “the reality of power will be in Parliament” and that “majorities will probably have to be found text by text.” For the socialist leader, “the Macronist camp must show responsibility” and say whether or not they are willing to join their votes in the future with the RN to overthrow an NFP government with a motion of censure. And in this regard, he recalled that the left did not do so in the previous legislature, although it was technically possible. (EFE)
#French #election #results #live #Macron #prime #minister #ensure #stability