Several French left-wing parties will not participate in the new series of consultations announced by the president for this Tuesday. Emmanuel Macronafter refusing to name his candidate for Prime Minister, Lucie Castets.
Socialists and environmentalists today expressed their refusal to participate in the consultations, which is in line with the Elysée’s plan not to convene the more radical La Francia Insumisa (LFI).
“I refuse to be an accomplice in a parody of democracy,” declared the first secretary of the Socialist Party this morning, Olivier Faurein an interview on the France 2 channel.
“What is actually happening (…) is that (Macron) does not want the programme of New Popular Frontthat we repeal last year’s pension reform,” he added.
Faure said Macron’s refusal to appoint a prime minister from the political bloc that won the most seats in the recent legislative elections represents “a democratic problem.”
The secretary general of the environmentalist party EELV, Marine Tondelieraccused Macron of having undertaken “an illiberal drift” by refusing to give the keys to government to the political bloc with the most seats in the National Assembly.
Tondelier announced that they would call “mobilizations“, while stressing that they will be “peaceful”, as he declared on public radio FranceInfo.
Castets herself acknowledges a feeling of “anger” because the president called early elections “without consulting, which no one understood,” and more than a month later “he tells the French that it’s no use, that they voted wrongly,” according to what he said on FranceInter radio.
The Elysée announced late Monday afternoon that after the end of political consultations with the leaders of the main parliamentary parties, Macron would not appoint Castets and would resume meetings with the training courses.
Sources at the Elysée Palace have however specified that neither LFI nor the far right of Marine Le Pen and her allies – considered outside the Republican arc – would be invited to the new round.
One of Macron’s main allies, the leader of the centrist MoDem party, François Bayrou, assured that the current situation “It’s not a complete blockage”.
Bayrou justified Macron’s refusal of a left-wing prime minister by asserting that, according to the presidential camp, the NFP coalition’s programme is in reality that of LFI.
