A few hours before the right-wing primary, Xavier Garcia, the first federal secretary of the Socialist Party (PS) of Alpes-Maritimes, shared his opinion on Macron’s candidacy through a letter.
With Emmanuel Macron’s candidacy bypassing the primary (of the left, should it be specified?), we have reached the moment that both you and I have dreaded for several weeks. The moment where there would be no other outcome than to make a choice, without being sure it will be the right one.
For a few weeks now, I have been repeatedly asked to impose disciplinary measures against you, but I have always refused. Because I don’t forget what some of you have accomplished for the Socialist Party. Because you’ve been perfectly loyal until now. And because your dual commitment was not yet irreconcilable. Today, it has become so, an obvious fact for everyone.
Because I have shared many significant moments with you and because we still share fundamental values in my eyes, I cannot wait for your choice without saying anything to you.
I don’t want to try to influence you by denigrating Emmanuel Macron. I supported his actions when he was in government, and I went to meet him at Bercy. How could I explain now that he is untouchable? As for the arguments about his lack of loyalty, the superficiality of his proposals, the illusion of bridging the right-left divide, you have already had many opportunities to reflect on them.
We all know that Emmanuel Macron is ultimately incidental in this debate. It concerns the Socialist Party, a party to which you are as viscerally attached as I am, but which, by no longer living up to the idea one has of it, has driven you to want to have an adventure.
The most frustrating thing about our party is not that it is derailing completely, but that it only lacks a little to meet our expectations and those of millions of people who know well that despite all its flaws, it is still the most beautiful tool, and perhaps even the only one, capable of changing French society for the better.
This “little thing,” in the end, led to many missed opportunities in recent years. It is a discourse that does not evolve even as French society is undergoing significant changes. It’s the rejection of Ségolène Royal at the time when she had understood that the complacency of insular activism was deadly. It’s the membership fee that cuts us off from the people we are supposed to defend and whom we therefore no longer understand. It’s the party’s inexcusable lack of preparation as a whole for an alternation that had never been as likely as it was in 2012. It’s the non-cumulation of mandates accepted by officials in freefall only at the cost of implementing it in 2017, which will leave this elementary reform at the mercy of a return to power by the right.
In many respects, however, we can be proud of what has been accomplished during this five-year term, in an exceedingly challenging context. But we have been unable to defend it because all these “little things” have ultimately undermined our confidence in ourselves. And by failing to respond or communicating reversely, it is the lies of the National Front, the bad faith of the right, and the immaturity of those on the left who refuse the constraints of power that have taken hold in people’s minds.
Yet leaving today would be the worst solution. It will not make Emmanuel Macron win, who will not find either a sociological majority or a political majority if he doesn’t fit into a collective process. And it will make us lose very precious time just as political life is undergoing sustainable structuring into three blocs. Without you, the left will fragment a little more and, between internal quarrels, we will become the referees of the one-upmanship in which the right and the FN will engage just as we were in PACA during the regional elections. Above all, we will miss other opportunities to change the PS so that it becomes again the party we love. The party of those who work hard. The party of those who suffer. The party that isn’t afraid of change and, on the contrary, anticipates it, respecting its history, its principles, but without dogmatism. The party that calls on the intelligence of citizens to counter populism and applies the principles it dictates first to itself. The party of Michel Rocard, Lionel Jospin, Pierre Mauroy.
This party, not only is it still possible to rebuild it on these foundations, but we will have to do so simply because in the coming years, we will have no choice. The only alternative is long-term electoral marginalization which will eventually make even the most entrenched of our apparatchiks evolve.
This promise without a deadline may not be as exciting as the allure of novelty and the desire to shake up the established political order at a moment that feels pivotal. But it is the only viable one, and the more of you who head towards the exit door of the Socialist Party, the longer and more difficult it will be to sustain.
Xavier GARCIA, 1st Federal Secretary PS06
