Mélenchon endorsed Huguette Bello, president of the Réunion Regional Council, as a candidate for Prime Minister of France

The leader of France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, defended this Friday the proposal of Huguette Bello, president of the regional council of La Réunion, an island. Indian Ocean Western, Eastern MadagascarBello is being considered as a candidate for the post of Prime Minister of France, in the Southern Hemisphere, following the victory of the Popular Front in the elections last Sunday, July 7. According to Mélenchon, Bello “meets many of the requirements” to become Prime Minister, and calls on the left to “act quickly”.

“There is no country in the world where, after the election, the president says nothing has happened (…). It’s a coup,” declared Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the Communist Party of Venezuela. apartAt a conference held in Paris, Le Monde reports.

Criticising the fact that Emmanuel Macron has not called on the left to form a government, he again said that “universal suffrage must be respected.”

The LFI leader assured that the left-wing coalition is ready to take power, and is even willing to suffer “all the consequences” given the risk of censure in the Assembly. “There are majorities that we have already confirmed”, said Mélenchon. According to Mélenchon, the Popular Front is willing to discuss in the Assembly “with others the issues on which we can agree”, such as the establishment of proportional representation, the issue of price levels or the ceiling of bank fees on prices.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon then addressed the issue of ongoing negotiations on the left to appoint a common candidate for Matignon, while the name of Huguette Bello, president of the regional council of La Réunion, was publicly defended by the PCF on Thursday.

Mélenchon, reviewing the discussions that have taken place in recent days, joked: “Sometimes we had the impression that we went from ‘not Mélenchon’ (to Matignon) to ‘not insumisos’, then from ‘not insumisos’ to a socialist, then from a socialist to Olivier Faure.

“Well, everything is part of the conversation,” he continued, also criticising the participation in the debate of Benoît Payan, the mayor of Marseille for the PS.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon then raised the prospect of appointing Huguette Bello, to applause from the room: “Huguette meets many requirements (…). Huguette is a woman from an overseas territory in the Indian Ocean, she is a person whose life and honest commitments no one would doubt (…), she would be someone to whom one would listen with respect (…). Huguette’s whole life is a demonstration of her ability not to be influenced by anyone. Huguette is a woman, and we are in the era of women; Huguette is a racialist woman, and the new France is racialist (…), the president of a community that took office from the right in the elections and around which the entire local left gathers.

According to Mélenchon, this “could embody this unity” of the left and the country. Mélenchon recalled that at the moment “at least three organizations (of the Popular Front) have agreed on the issue”, “the rebels, the Communists and the Greens”, stressing that the decision is now in the hands of the Socialists, properly gathered now to debate it. He asked the Popular Front to present the name of a common candidate “as soon as possible” before 18 July.

Talks

French left-wing parties have been stuck for a week in appointing a consensus candidate for prime minister to propose to President Emmanuel Macron.

“There has been a blockade situation there for a few hours,” he said. Fabian Roussel, secretary general of the Communist Party (PCF), admitted this Friday that “we could not reach a compromise between the proposals of La Francia Insumisa (LFI) and the Socialist Party (PS),” reports Efe.

In a statement to the press, Roussel assured that among the parties that make up the New Popular Front (in addition to the LFI, the PS and the PCF, there are also environmentalists) there is an “extreme urgency” to agree on a candidate, despite the fact that there is no progress.

The left parties had said they would present Macron as a consensus candidate for prime minister this week.

Faced with persistent blockades, Roussel said there was an attempt to “find another way” with a candidate from outside the LFI and PS, the two majority formations of the Popular Front, and the Communists proposed the 73-year-old Bello, a former Communist, as president of the Reunion regional council and former deputy.

The LFI has so far proposed four choices for prime minister: party founder Jean-Luc Mélenchon; its current national coordinator, Manuel Bompard; its head of delegations, Mathilde Panot, and its number two in the assembly, Clémence Guété, according to the French press.

But at the same time the Socialist Party, which has confirmed its intention to keep the entire left as a united front for the time being despite signs of Macronism, aspires to occupy the Matignon palace with names such as its first secretary Olivier Faure.

The NFP, which with its allies is the first force in the assembly with 195 seats (although far from the absolute majority of 289), demands that the president summon them to govern and accuses him of ignoring the results of the elections of June 30 and July 7.

Meanwhile, the president, recently arrived from the NATO summit in Washington, held meetings this Friday with the main figures of his movement, such as the acting prime minister, Gabriel Attal, and several members of his government, as well as the former president of the National Assembly, Yael Braun-Pivet.

“The image we have given in recent days is disastrous,” Macron rebuked his “generals” at the Elysée meeting, telling the crowd after a week of constant internal recriminations following the election, according to one of the attendees.

Macron asks his lieutenants for “unity”

Macron asked them for “unity” and warned that if any of his lieutenants tried to break that unity to launch a campaign for the 2027 presidential elections, “they will be swept away,” Le Parisien described.

It has lost more than 80 deputies in the presidential field and its relative majority in the House, which is why it is moving away from remaining in government, although it is trying to form a complex – and for now very unlikely – coalition that ranges from the conservatives to the right to the socialists, which would leave the Center Bloc as its majority component.

In summary, Communist leader Roussel denounced Macron’s “attempt to retain power” “despite the fact that the French people have shown massive anger against his policies.”

The prospect of an NFP-led government was once again rejected by the presidential camp, which considered the presence of members of the bloc’s most radical formation, La Francia Insumisa (LFI), as taboo.

“The presence of LFI members within the government formed by the NFP is a clear red line. It would mean the immediate presentation of a censure motion and the immediate fall of the government,” warned elected representative and outgoing minister Aurore Bergé.

Speaking to France Info, Bergé criticised the left for what he sees as contradictions in the left-wing bloc when it comes to considering who has the legitimacy to try to form a government.

“The same people who said we were a minority when we had 250 (representatives) consider themselves a majority when they have less than 200,” he said, referring to the NFP.