A new recount confirms the triumph of Olivier Faure with 51.6% of the vote while his rival, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, maintains that the results are fraudulent
The disputed re-election of Olivier Faure as first secretary of the French Socialist Party (PS) has plunged the formation of the rose into a new crisis, a few days before the start of its congress, which will take place from January 27 to 29 in Marseille. Faure was ratified as leader of the formation with 51.6% of the votes against Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, who obtained 48.91%, according to a new official count announced on Sunday. His rival, however, continues to question the results of this internal election and denounces that there has been fraud.
The socialist leader assures, instead, that the result is “indisputable” and that it is “a bad controversy.” Faure, first secretary of the PS since April 2018, made a call for unity on Monday. “Now it is necessary to move forward and seek to unite the group of socialists,” he said in an interview on the France Info radio station.
Former Socialist Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault considers that the situation in which the PS is experiencing is “pathetic” and the result of “a power struggle.” Ayrault recalled on Sunday in a radio interview that the Socialist Party has never been so weak. “We are fighting among ourselves, although the differences in (political) orientations are not that considerable,” said the former head of government during the presidency of François Hollande.
The French Socialist Party is divided into two camps: supporters and detractors of the New Popular, Ecological and Social Union (Nupes), the alliance of left-wing parties. This coalition is made up of La Francia Insumisa, the PS, Europe Ecology-The Greens (EE-LV) and the French Communist Party. Faure has been one of the promoters of the Nupes, while Mayer-Rossignol and other detractors of this group criticize that the socialists depend so much on La Francia Insumisa, the formation of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the equivalent of Podemos in French territory.
at risk of disappearing
Nupes was created for the 2022 legislative elections after no left-wing candidate managed to qualify for the second round of the presidential elections. Their goal: to win a greater number of seats in the National Assembly and prevent their candidates from competing with each other for the vote of the left. The Socialists thus managed to retain 30 seats in the National Assembly.
Faure’s disputed leadership deepens the crisis that the Socialist Party has suffered for years. Many political analysts wonder if the political force that led France with former heads of state François Mitterrand and François Hollande could disappear. Not in vain, he suffered a strong bump in the 2022 presidential elections. His candidate, Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, obtained 1.7% of the votes in the first round, the lowest percentage in the history of the PS in an election of this type.
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