Eight days after the very tight vote of activists, Olivier Faure and Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol have still not found an agreement on the identity of the new first secretary.
By Sandrine Cassini
The Palais du Pharo, majestic Marseille monument overlooking the Mediterranean, will it be, for the Socialist Party (PS), the theater of a new struggle to death, or the opportunity to put an end to a bad Film started on January 19? Difficult to decide on the eve of the opening of the PS congress, which is held from Friday 27 to Sunday 29 January in Marseille. At dawn Friday, the two candidates for the post of first secretary remained in irreconcilable positions. The deputy of Seine-et-Marne Olivier Faure always claims a victory refused to him by his rival, the mayor of Rouen, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, denouncing the irregularities of the ballot. “Everything we could have done rather than fighting in the mud for six months on the Congress!”, Gets the current leader of the PS.
From the meeting held in his office in Ivry-sur-Seine on Monday January 23, the elected official saw neither Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, nor his circumstance ally, Hélène Geoffroy, even if they called themselves this week. Eliminated during the vote of January 12, the mayor of Vaulx-en-Velin, behind which the faithful of former President François Hollande were placed, represents one of the Party currents in the management authorities.
The deputy continues to offer his two rivals, faced on January 12 during a first vote, assistant positions in a college direction. But they want more. The mayor of Rouen sent him a memorandum of understanding, engraving in marble an alternative governance project. In this document, Rouen’s councilor fixes the rules of a management at four, only a means, according to him, to represent the weight of the three sensitivities. With 49 % in the first round, Olivier Faure would have a second ally in this direction. Johanna Rolland for example, which he today wants to make his number two. There would also be Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol and Hélène Geoffroy. The decisions would be taken by consensus, and the disagreements would be decided by a vote of the National Council. Olivier Faure would retain the title of national secretary. But in fact, he would be under supervision.
The graying fifties repeat to whoever wants to hear it all the evil he thinks of this idea in the form of a gas factory, paralyzing for the party. As if to prove his good faith, Rouen’s councilor swears that if he had won the congress with only half of the votes, he would have “proposed exactly the same thing”. And also hammers that “the party is fractured in two. Politically, we have to get out of that”. In the meantime, faced with a ballot which he considers as “not clear”, he asked for the resumption of “the harvesting commission”, which was supposed to play the peace judges after the vote of January 19, but whose work does not did not succeed.
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