France’s presidential election - An agreement to disagree
Out of a collapse at the 2007 presidential elections has come a new alliance of the far left, including the Communist Party, banded together as the Front de Gauche to challenge the current norms of economic thought
by Antoine Schwartz
The French department of Aube has a solidly rightwing reputation. The mayor and member of the national assembly for Troyes, its largest municipality, is François Baroin, economy and finance minister in Nicolas Sarkozy’s government. Before the local textile industry died out, Aube had a strong labour movement, but Troyes’ former bourse du travail (labour exchange) building is soon to be redeveloped as a shopping centre. The town’s communists are outraged and have formed an association to preserve the memory of its former role.
The Parti Communiste Français (PCF) plays a key role in the Front de Gauche (Left Front). PCF activists come together at the offices of its newspaper, La Dépêche de l’Aube, on the Avenue Anatole-France, when they have a meeting or when they need to replenish their stocks of pamphlets. In Troyes, as elsewhere, the establishment of the Front de Gauche was made possible by leftwing parties learning to look beyond their individual goals. “This union was not built in a day,” said Jean-Pierre Cornevin, secretary of the Aube branch of the PCF. “It started after the disaster of 2007 [the party’s defeat at the presidential election]. Building something new takes time.”
The desire for “something new” seemed to be the dominant mood at huge rallies in Paris, Marseilles and Toulouse this year, where Communists who had been wondering where their comrades had gone discovered each other again. On 18 March the Front de Gauche’s presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon addressed a huge crowd of supporters bearing red flags on the Place de la Bastille. Rallies across France attracted an astonishing diversity of people of all ages, precarious workers and civil servants, curious onlookers and seasoned activists from trade unions and political parties. Like Germany’s Die Linke (The Left) or Portugal’s Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc), the Front de Gauche aims to reunify the long-fragmented groups to the left of the Parti Socialiste (PS).
http://mondediplo.com/2012/05/03fdg