The delegates of the socialist congress of Marseille ratified this Saturday the re-election of Olivier Faure as first secretary of the PS, thanks to an agreement with his rival Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, which puts an end to several days of internal disputes and fractures.
On the second day of the congress, at the Palais du Pharo, the 186 delegates almost unanimously waved their red card validating the agreement between the two rivals, and related in particular to the composition of the leadership.
This “collective governance and socialist mobilization pact” thus recognizes Olivier Faure as first secretary of the party.
Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol becomes First Deputy Secretary
The outgoing party and his rival, Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, who has so far contested his victory, agreed to this text late in the morning, after a long night of negotiations.
“This house, you have just saved it, once again”, reacted to the microphone, between applause, the mayor of Marseille Benoît Payan, who said “he had been afraid in recent days”.
Just before the vote, the two rivals greeted and kissed in front of the activists, who chanted “all together, all together, socialists.”
The text determines that Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, skeptical of the Nupes left-wing alliance, will become first deputy secretary -a title created for the occasion- along with the pro-Faure mayoress of Nantes Johanna Rolland.
“It is a global governance agreement, which integrates the majority and the minority,” Olivier Faure explained to the press, “a pact that connects everyone but at different levels.”
No collegiate leadership
According to the text, the first secretary and the first two deputy secretaries will work “in a collegiate manner, seeking consensus.”
But “there is no collegiate direction that occupies the function of first secretary,” Olivier Faure specified, recalling that in case of divergence, the decision-making body remains the national office.
Without mentioning the Nupes alliance by name, the agreement also specifies that the management “is part of the will to follow, with respect for sensitivities, a strategy of rapprochement with the left and ecology”, with “the need for the party to socialist once again become its central force”.
Hélène Geoffroy, leader of the anti-Nupes, will not be part of the leadership but will assume the presidency of the national council, the party’s parliament. A symbolic function, which marks “that it is associated with the meeting but does not share the line” of orientation, said Olivier Faure.
“A moment that will go down in congress history”
The mayor of Rouen, critical of the leftist Nupes alliance of which Olivier Faure is the architect, disputed for several days the victory of the outgoing first secretary (officially with 51.09%).
Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol says he embodies a central line, less pro-Nupes than Olivier Faure. He does not hide his reluctance before the LFI and an agreement that has disappointed many socialists.
“This meeting should be our pride for all”, stressed Pierre Jouvet, representative of Olivier Faure, on the podium, considering that “we are living, as the socialists have the secret and also the talent, a moment that will go down in history”. of our congresses”.
“There is an architecture to build with respect to what the activists have expressed,” explains the leader of the deputies Boris Vallaud, that is, a “balancing of the balance of power.”
“Collect” and “not “crush”
After a first vote on the orientation text, Olivier Faure had obtained 49% of the votes and the mayor of Rouen around 30%, ahead of a third candidate, the mayor of Vaulx-en-Velin Hélène Geoffroy (around twenty %).
Negotiations were notably unblocked when the latter, which had been unable to hold its own and had decided to support Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, indicated that it did not want to join the leadership, but rather to remain in opposition.
“They assume that they are a minority, but they are no longer with Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, which changes the situation” and the balance of power, explains a close friend of Olivier Faure.
“Our objective is to unite the people and not crush them,” explained this same source, while the internal war between the two camps has fractured the party and damaged the image of the PS, already weakened by the historic failure of its presidential candidate, Ana Hidalgo (1.7%).
Source: BFM TV
