The left showed its unity in the streets on Saturday, during demonstrations against the far right across France.
But the ousting of LFI deputies opposed to Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the surprise candidacy of François Hollande have revived divisions within the New Popular Front.
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2024 legislative elections
Several hundred thousand opponents of the far right marched across France on Saturday, at the call of unions, associations and the New Popular Front. Across the country, 640,000 people demonstrated, including 250,000 in Paris, according to the CGT union. The authorities, for their part, counted 250,000 people in France, including 75,000 people in the capital.
The left-wing leaders marched in the lead in Paris. Without a word on the deep differences which are shaking the New Popular Front, after the decision of La France Insoumise not to reinvest several figures opposed to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Danielle Simonnet, Raquel Garrido and Alexis Corbière – historical figures of the movement opposed to the Mélenchonist line – were brutally dismissed, replaced by candidates unknown to the general public. “A purge”denounced the first, the second accusing Jean-Luc Mélenchon of “settle accounts”.
“Lifetime nominations do not exist” within our movement, lashed out at the tribune in 20 Minutes, also calling into question their “loyalty”. In the meantime, Olivier Faure assured that he wanted “settle the scandalous eviction” of these deputies, without further details.
Another potential subject of discord within the New Popular Front, the former socialist president François Hollande, favorable to the union of the left against the extreme right, announced his candidacy for the legislative elections in Corrèze.
In the countryside after the “astonishment” of the dissolution, Gabriel Attal, for his part, revealed the first measures of the majority’s program, in the event of victory. With a leitmotif: strengthening the purchasing power of middle-class French people. At 8 p.m. on France 2, he castigated the projects “unrealistic and unachievable” of the National Rally and the New Popular Front which would lead the country to “economic ruin”.
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