On the eve of the visit of national secretary Pierre Laurent to the department*, Cécile Dumas gathered party activists at the PCF 06 headquarters to deliver the traditional New Year wishes for 2017.
The gathering was small but composed of loyal and attentive members listening to the departmental leader. While she donned the garb of a political leader, she did not shed the mantle of an activist.
Her message was simple and clear: denounce the economic and social policies of the socialist government and support Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s candidacy for the presidency, as he presents an alternative program to capitalism and its excesses.
“They have allowed liberalism to develop and in doing so they have armed authoritarianism” – she thus condemned the socialist quinquennial.
The forecasts do not bode well for electoral success and, as in a democracy, what matters is the vote of the electorate. The risk is that all these fine words will come to nothing after election days.
Benoît Hamon’s success may open new prospects for a convergence between the three lefts (socialist, ecologist, radical left), but how to reconcile three programs and, above all, three competing ambitions?
The possibility of not reaching the second round of the presidential election is more than a possibility, and the competition among the three left-wing candidates could resemble a final between losers, dividing rather than uniting.
Immediately after, the legislative elections will loom on the horizon with the probability of a verdict that could jeopardize the presence of communists and ecologists in the National Assembly as parliamentary groups.
The question is simple: How to present oneself to a fractured and probably wounded electorate?
Without unity, there is no future, but… what unity? With whom and what?
For Cécile Dumas, there is no doubt: “only the PCF can do it.”
The activist, as we said!
