Why we support Besancenot

France
Presidential elections: Why we support Besancenot
Fred Leplat


The French presidential elections, with the first round is on April 22, will be an important milestone for the political forces of both the left and the right. Although there are over 36 individuals vying to get the administrative sponsorships of at least 500 mayors to be on the ballot paper, the main battle lines are clear.
The current Minister of the Interior, Nicholas Sarkozy, has been able to establish himself as the candidate of the mainstream neo-liberal right against both the Prime Minister Dominique Villepin – currently embroiled in the “Clearstream” corruption investigation – and President Jacques Chirac, who has lost all credibility.
Sarkozy sets himself out to be hard on law and order, by making provocative remarks aimed at attracting supporters of the neo-Nazi National Front.
During the revolt of the working class suburbs in the winter of 2005, he said that he was going “to clean out the scum from the area with high pressure water hoses”. This language has legitimised hard right ideas with the National Front maintaining its position in opinion polls and resulted in the Socialist Party being dragged to the right.
Sarkozy has also embraced a hard version of the neo-liberal economic agenda from North America. He has warned that it is necessary to reform “the French model” to face the challenge of capitalist globalisation.
This will lead to more attacks on pay, pensions, the length of the working week and a reduction on taxes for the rich.
The main parliamentary party on the left, the Socialist Party, has failed to challenge the drive to the right by Sarkozy. The new leader, Segolene Royal, has modelled herself on Blair.
She has dropped all mention of specific economic or social measures, and instead uses vague phrases about the ‘need to listen’ and for ‘modernisation’.
The left of the Socialist Party, which campaigned for a No vote in the referendum for the European Constitution in April 2005, has thrown itself wholeheartedly behind Segolene Royal.
The strategy fails to mount any effective challenge to the neo-liberal right; this is confirmed by Royal trailing Sarkozy in the opinion polls by at least 5 per cent.
The mobilisations over the last two years, starting with the European referendum in April 2005, then with the student strike against new youth job contracts in spring 2006, and continuing now with the fight against privatisation, had brought the left and raised the possibility of a unitary candidate for the presidential elections to oppose neo-liberalism.
Arising out of the previous struggles, over 700 local committees set themselves up last to explore the way forward. They included the Communist Party, the LCR (French section of the Fourth International), ecologists as well as members of the more radical unions such as the FSU, SUD and CGT.
Marie-George Buffet (general secretary of the CP) and Jose Bove announced that they were putting their names forward to be considered as candidates by the committees, together with a number of other less well-known candidates. Then shortly before the November 2006 national meeting of the committees which was due to make a decision, Bove withdrew his name
The LCR had started to collect the nominations of mayors from early 2006 in support of its own candidate, Olivier Besancenot, but it also stated that it would withdraw him if an agreed candidate was found who would be clear on non-participation in an SP government. It stated that it did not think that the known spokesperson of a political party could be a credible candidate of such a unitary process.
Although the committees adopted a programme of action known as the “125 Propositions” that broke with neo-liberalism, the national meetings continually avoided discussing proposals from the LCR that any joint candidate should refuse to participate in a Socialist Party government or be part of its parliamentary group.
This crucial discussion was manoeuvred off the agenda by the Communist Party, while others such as Jose Bove remained silent. Given the experience of the left in Lula’s Brazilian government and of Rifondazione in Prodi’s government in Italy, this is the issue which cannot be ducked by those committed to building a political opposition to neo-liberalism.
In a vote of the local committees for the unitary candidate, the CP national secretary Buffet was able to get 55%. This vote was felt by many to have been achieved by packing local meetings and the creation of local collectives that comprised CP members only.
The CP then tried to get the endorsement of its membership for Buffet as the candidate of the left against neo-liberalism.
Although 99% of CP members were originally in favour of putting Buffet’s name forward, over 20,000 members in this second vote either abstained or voted No, and six resigned from its National Executive Committee. These events in November of last year disappointed activists in the 2007 Left Alternative, to the extent that Bove withdrew his name as a possible candidate.
However in January 2007, an internet campaign was started up for Bove to be the candidate of the committees. This culminated at the end of January at a national meeting of some 300 of the local committees which endorsed Bove as the candidate and called on Buffet and Besancenot to withdraw.
Although the field on the anti-globalisation left seems to be crowded with candidates, which taken together score around 10% in the polls, there are nevertheless some clear differences.
Marie-George Buffet has got the 500 sponsorships … not difficult as her party has several thousand elected representatives entitled to give them, and is being presented by her party as the “unitary” candidate of the anti-neoliberal left, even though the committees are not backing her.
But her claim that the CP represents an alternative to neo-liberalism has been severely dented by refusing to state clearly that she would refuse to participate in a SP government and by CP councillors participating in coalition administrations of local towns which are carrying through neo-liberal policies.
Bove, who has yet to get the 500 sponsorships necessary by March 19, supports a programme against neo-liberalism and has stated on some occasions that it is impossible to consider a governmental or parliamentary agreement with the Socialist Party. Although a campaigner against globalisation and in defence of the environment, he has not had the same profile that Besancenot has amongst youth and the union movement.
There is also Arlette Laguiller of Lutte Ouvriere, who has been standing for the last 30 years. She has got a loyal electorate of at least 2%, and has got the nominations required to be on the ballot. However, Lutte Ouvriere has been totally absent from the debates on the left and is quietly ploughing its own field.
Besancenot, the candidate of the LCR, has already got over 400 nominations and has been touring the country where workers have been fighting back such as Quebecor in Lille and Nestle in Quimperle. Local meetings have also been impressive in size, such as the one at the end of January in Gerardemer, a town of 10,000 in Alsace, where over 450 came to hear Besancenot even though it was snowing and the temperature was minus 5.
With the drift towards neo-liberalism of the Socialist Party, dragging in its wake the Communist Party, there is a crying need for a unitary candidate to unite the French left. A “crying need”, however, does not resolve the practical problem as to who that candidate should or could be.
This is the problem that has divided the LCR for months. Buffet is politically unacceptable given that she would participate in an SP government given half a chance and Bove, whilst being able and an activist of the global justice movement, is somewhat of an unreliable maverick.
Besancenot, the candidate of the LCR, is on the other hand the best candidate on offer both in terms of his politics and his popular appeal, though he would never be accepted as such by the other organisations. In the current situation, the best way to strengthen the resistance to neo-liberalism is to see the biggest possible vote for Besancenot.