Strike of January 13: the left mobilized, without crossing – The HuffPost

POLITICS – “It’s already a successful day.” It is 11:30 a.m., Anne Hidalgo is about to go on stage to present her program and Patrick Mennucci, one of her spokespersons, hardly hides his satisfaction: “David Assouline has just had the figures, we have broken the record audience on France Inter this morning”, we welcome.

Not bad for a moribund candidacy that tops out at 5% in polls. The southerner then comments on the choice of the mayor of Paris not to have shifted the presentation of its programat Ground Control, a new trendy space in the 12th arrondissement, despite the massive mobilization of teachers planned for the same afternoon. Clearly: this day, for the socialist tenors, must be that of a new beginning. Truly?

The enthusiasm will be short-lived. The same protagonists, from Patrick Kanner to Olivier Faure, met three hours later and two kilometers further, near the Luxembourg Gardens, to support the teacher demonstrators. They experienced a small snub on the scale of the presidential campaign. Their candidate was booed… when the other leaders of the left were applauded, at least welcomed.

Hidalgo booed, the lefts dispersed

The scene takes place shortly after 2 p.m. Anne Hidalgo, surrounded by her order service and several oils from the rose and fist training, strolls on the boulevard Saint-Marcel, in the fifth arrondissement of the capital. Alongside, but not inside the procession.

And for good reason, barely arrived, the mayor of Paris finds herself taken to task by several demonstrators. “Slut”, “traitor”, get out”… the insults burst out, the bodyguards tense up, and Olivier Faure’s gaze is more worried, or tense, than usual. “We don’t give a fuck if you come here to show off,” even chants a female voice, difficult to recognize in the crowd, but with the sound level of those who belch their anger.

“Does that surprise you?”, then launches a rebellious executive to the few journalists who attend the scene, “me not”, he continues while the atmosphere is still heavy when Anne Hidalgo and her aeropagus pass just behind the tent installed by the movement for the occasion. “The PS bears a heavy responsibility in the breakage of the school. And the teachers remember it”, comments Thomas Portes, former spokesperson for Sandrine Rousseau and now part of the LFI campaign.

“They need to understand that their time is up. People are terribly disillusioned by their action in power”, we will confide a little later Jean-Luc Melenchonjust before leaving the boulevard, pressed for time and debates in the National Assembly.

The rebellious do not sulk their pleasure when demonstrators stop at the foot of their improvised tribune, their fists raised, with anti-Blanquer slogans. “And in the end, you will free them all!”, launches the tribune, in a half-amused half-carnivorous smile. “We will get there!”, he wants to believe. An atmosphere that contrasts sharply with the bronca caused by the mayor of Paris.

A little further on, the welcome given to the Communists is flattering. It’s not easy to approach Fabien Roussel, the PCF candidate who “just pops a head” before going to support the nursing staff at Bichat hospital, as he is busy responding to activists or posing with them for selfies.

“It’s a very good thing to see several left-wing candidates here,” he assures us, before returning to the delicate moment experienced by the Socialists: “We can’t promise a whole lot of things if we don’t does not attack the world of money.” For him, “people understood it well” and that explains the hostility towards Anne Hidalgo and the PS.

Without too much surprise, the only unionist gesture of the day will come from Sandrine Rousseau, unsuccessful candidate for the EELV primary who pleads for the rally. She will come, at the end of the procession, with green flags, to split “the pack” of journalists to hit the fist of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. A very furtive scene which will not have the merit of making things happen, three months from the first round.

Meanwhile, candidate Yannick Jadot was demonstrating in Grenoble, nearly 400 kilometers away. What to keep even further away from the spectacle of the divisions of the left.