Hervé Gattegno, editor in chief of Le Point, has a spot on French radio station RMC on weekday mornings called “Le Parti Pris” ( “The Bias”) in which he is interviewed on his views about politics. On 19th March he dealt with one of the key questions of the campaign: what does the growing popularity of Jean-Luc Mélenchon mean for François Hollande’s bid to become President?
Photo: Witt / Stéphane Lemouton / Sipa / Abaca
Article source: “Mélenchon peut faire gagner Hollande... malgré lui”, Hervé Gattegno, Le Point (19/03/2012)
Jean-Luc Mélenchon has achieved a breakthrough in the polls: he now routinely gets more than 10% of voting intentions.* Might his rise be an obstacle to François Hollande? Apparently you don’t think so. Your opinion is that Mélenchon might help Hollande win... against his own will. What do you mean exactly?
We need to avoid jumping to conclusions. Just because Nicolas Sarkozy and his followers suddenly think that Jean-Luc Mélenchon might be the answer to their prayers, it doesn’t necessarily make him their ally. And neither does it mean, just because François Hollande and his henchmen have been increasing their calls for people to “vote tactically,” that a vote for Mélenchon can be seen as a a wasted vote. What is certain is that Jean-Luc Mélenchon has managed to federate a leftwing discontent, a frustration and an anger that Hollande has failed to channel. He has been able to set the campaign alight with a mixture of eloquence that recalls the Third Republic** and anti-globalisation arguments, a cocktail which has proved explosive enough to demolish the far left, wake the Communist Party from its slumber and shake the PS to its core. But in the end, everybody knows that Jean-Luc Mélenchon will call on his supporters to vote for François Hollande in the second round. So he’s no threat to Hollande. The most I’d say is that he’s exerting pressure on him.
You mean that he wants to force François Hollande to position himself further to the left?
That’s obviously his goal. His “civic insurrection” is the antithesis of the social-democratic change that François Hollande is proposing. Jean-Luc Mélenchon wants to prevent the PS from slipping to the center. He wants to grab it by its left hand and pull it towards him. For the moment, it isn’t working too badly. Take the 75% top rate of income tax, for example: everybody knows that Hollande only came up with that because he noticed voting intentions were evaporating on the left in favour of Mélenchon. And it gave a second wind to his campaign, which looked like it was stalling, but it didn’t weaken Mélenchon. It goes to show that it’s not just a tug of war between the two candidates, but that Jean-Luc Mélenchon has managed to shift the centre of gravity of the left towards his position, closer to the Leninist left than to the Liberal left.
Speaking of which, Jean-Luc Mélenchon is often compared to Georges Marchais, the General Secretary of the PC in the 70s. Do you think this comparison holds up?
No. He’s got the gift of the gab like Georges Marchais, and, like him, he likes to put journalists in their place – which always plays well. But it’s rather offensive to compare his erudition and his rhetoric to the wisecracking Marchais, who was funny, but not always in the way he meant to be, and who was rarely as inspired as Mélenchon. Above all, Georges Marchais was one of the people who put the nail in the coffin of Communism in France, because he was never able to keep his distance from the Soviet regime and he was outmanoeuvred by François Mitterrand. As for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, he’s a dyed in the wool anti-communist who is resurrecting the PC. This is another performance entirely!
If François Hollande is elected, will he be able to govern with the socialists?
He swears blind that he won’t, but this is not Mélenchon at his most convincing. Reading his manifesto, it’s clear that the ideas he propounds are closer to those of President Chavez in Venezuela than those of European social-democracy. But Jean-Luc Mélenchon himself says he learnt politics from François Mitterrand. This means two things: 1. He has at least one thing in common with François Hollande. 2. His uncompromising stance should sometimes be taken with a pinch of salt.
NOTES
* On average 14% by 19th April. (Editor’s note)
** Third Republic: The Republican constitution that was in place from 1870 (the end of the Franco-Prussian War and the collapse of the Second Empire) to 1940 (the Vichy Goverment). The period from 1870 to 1914 saw many of the developments that led to the modern secular French Republic and, perhaps especially on the centre left, it is seen as a period that produced politicians of exemplary dynamism and sophistication, including the “father” of modern French socialism, Jean Jaures. (Editor’s note)
Translation: Clémentine Rayer and Juliette Rosard
Editing: Sam Trainor