Forget the presidency, I can lead France as its
PM, insists Mélenchon
Veteran leftist is courting allies to help make him
prime minister in June, handing him power to disrupt the winner of Sunday’s
vote
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Kim
Willsher in Paris
Sat 23 Apr
2022 17.57 BST
Whoever
wins the presidential election in France, one man is determined to sideline
them and restrict their powers.
Even before
the result is known tomorrow, the radical left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who
has emerged as a surprise kingmaker, has called on voters to make him prime
minister in the legislative elections in June.
Mélenchon,
a fervent opponent of both Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, pledged that if
successful he would force whoever wins the keys to the Élysée tomorrow into an
uncomfortable parliamentary “cohabitation” that would hamstring efforts by them
to pass reforms the left opposes.
The
70-year-old leader of La France Insoumise (LFI – Unbowed France), who had
promised to retire after his third presidential bid, said giving his party a
majority in the Assemblée Nationale would make the election a “third round”. It
would also resolve the dilemma for those voters – especially on the left – who
felt politically orphaned by the first round result a fortnight ago. Many of
the 7.7 million people who voted for Mélenchon have said they will abstain
tomorrow.
Last week,
as Macron, 44, and Le Pen, 53, crossed France attempting to attract the almost
50% of voters who preferred another candidate, LFI was engaged in frantic
negotiations with ecologists and communists to form a united bloc to oppose the
eventual winner. Polls released on Friday suggest Macron is still favourite,
but the legitimacy of his second term will be questioned if he does not secure
a convincing victory.
The
legislative vote is traditionally fought on party lines, but Mélenchon is
determined to make it personal. “I ask the French to elect me prime minister. I
ask them to elect a majority of MPs from La France Insoumise. And I call on all
those who want to join the Popular Union [of the left] to join us in this
beautiful combat.”
He reminded
voters it was the PM not the president who signed off government decrees. “I
would be prime minister not by the grace and favour of M Macron or Mme Le Pen,
but because the French wanted it,” he said, adding it would make the president
“secondary”. He ruled out any negotiation with the new president.
“If it does
not suit the president then they can go, because I will not,” he said in an
interview with BFMTV.
Mélenchon’s
ambitions were boosted after he polled just 421,308 votes behind Le Pen in the
first round on 10 April, which saw the collapse of the traditional left- and
rightwing parties. The three other leftwing candidates – from the Ecology
party, the Communist party and Socialist party (PS) – polled a total of just
over 3m votes. That would have ensured his second-round place had they
supported his campaign.
The result
angered many Mélenchon supporters, particularly the young and those in
working-class areas, leading to protests at Paris universities including the
Sorbonne and Sciences Po, even though 41% of 18-25s – more than 4 million
voters – abstained in the first round.
The
campaign for the 577 seats in the French lower house will begin on 10 May.
Macron’s centrist La Republique en Marche (LREM) currently has 263 seats, the
conservative opposition Les Républicains, 93; the centrist MoDem, 52; the PS,
25 and La France Insoumise just 17.
Mélenchon
insisted his Union Populaire was leading in 105 constituencies, and that a
majority of 290 was “possible”. “If I don’t fight for this victory, what do I
do: say ‘go ahead give them all the power’?. I don’t want Mme Le Pen to win the
country and I don’t want M Macron to keep power. I say there is a third round.
It’s for the French to decide who is the head of government,” he said in an
interview last week.
Mélenchon
would need the support of all France’s leftwing electorate, around 11.8 million
of whom voted in the first round, if he stands any chance of a majority in
parliament after the elections on 12 and 19 June. Mélenchon has rebuffed
suggestions of any alliance with the PS.
Manon
Aubry, an LFI MEP, spent last week in negotiations with leftwing parties to
form an alliance for the legislative elections. “There are obstacles, but
there’s a common desire to create a union around a programme,” Aubry told the
Observer.
Asked about
the PS, she added the party would have to drop its “neo-liberal stance”. “We
have put a certain number of conditions on the table and the ball is in their
court. The question is, are they ready to come towards us?”.
Antoine
Bristielle, a political analyst and director of the Opinion Observatory at the
left-leaning Jean Jaurès Foundation, said Mélenchon had pulled a political
masterstroke, learning the lesson of 2017 when he failed to unite the left
after the presidential vote.
“After
2017, he didn’t succeed in maintaining high-level support for the subsequent
elections, and he wants to do it differently this time,” Bristielle said.
“He’s
trying to consolidate his base support and has realised the way to do this is
from a position of force.
“It’s not a
question of how many MPs he gets but whether he can get the ecologists and
communists behind him before the legislative elections, thus creating a
political force. I honestly think he doesn’t want the PS to join him; he
considers the party doesn’t represent much now and will die on its own, so
joining it would be more negative than positive.”
Laurent
Joffrin, former director of the newspaper Libération, said LFI partners would
be expected to “submit” rather than be allies, and have to sign up to
Mélenchon’s policies including pulling out of Europe.
“These
positions are not those of the voters of the non-Mélenchonist left and even
less of a more centrist electorate.
“This is
the eternal problem of the radical left: it has a chance at power but in no way
does it want to pull together to achieve it,” Joffrin wrote.
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