Saintes, 28 April 2017
Dear Yannick,
I heartily support your indignation and your determination to see the defeat of Marine Le Pen, feelings that you expressed on France-Inter yesterday. So like you, and with the same reservations, I will vote Macron on May 7. I refuse to contribute even slightly to the election of someone wanting to copy Trump.
However, it seems to me that the EELV Party (Europe Ecologie - Les Verts) and you yourself ought to reconsider your role in the process that led to the sorry situation we face.
As it turned out, Mélenchon, with 19.58 % of the vote in the first round, would have needed only 1.8% more to overtake Marine Le Pen (21.30 %), eliminate her and be present in the second round. Hamon (with 6.36%) would have needed 15% more to do that. If we recall that in 2012 in round one Eva Joly got 2.31%, then we can reasonably estimate that (other things being equal) if EELV had chosen to "fuse" with Mélenchon’s France Insoumise, rather than with Hamon, the ideas and values of the left-leaning greens would have been present in the second round of this year’s election, instead of those of Mme Le Pen.
Out of those two programmes: that of Hamon’s « France du cœur » (…du cœur et de la Bombe : Cf. Lettre à Benoît Hamon, député de gauche, candidat pour la bombe atomique) and that of Mélenchon’s « France Insoumise », the latter was much the more coherent, the more implementable and the closer to EELV’s programme. This was true even on European policy, for Mélenchon’s Plan A was the one with the greatest chance of "saving Europe" by democratisation, "socialisation" and "ecologisation". As it stands, Europe, in the form that Benoît Hamon and Emmanuel Macron mean to perpetuate it, is rushing towards bankruptcy. Europe is already actively advancing ultraliberal globalisation (capitalist, pitiless to humans, and ecocidal), along with giving finance power over the economy and the States, and fostering the ideas of Mme Le Pen and similar fascist or fascist-leaning personalities in Europe. From this point of view I think that the « européisme » of EELV is counter-productive, and de facto anti-European.
Let’s change the subject. Tell us, Yannick, that decision to "fuse" with Hamon, who made it and how? Who decided that you would efface yourself behind him, how was the decision taken and announced in the media before any internal vote or debate? Even if it could have been well-judged, was it a democratic choice?
I add that from the viewpoint of phasing out nuclear technology, which is apparently "in the DNA of the greens", the agreement made with Benoît Hamon was a very bad one - like the 2011 agreement between EELV and the Socialist Party. (*) It pushed back by 15 years (from 2035 to 2050) the exit from nuclear power and ignored nuclear weapons. On that last point, compare it with the anti-nuclear position of la France Insoumise :
Jean-Luc Mélenchon replies to ACDN and commits to a referendum on France’s participation in the abolition of nuclear weapons ; Mélenchon pour un monde sans armes nucléaires.
Must I remind you, Yannick, that shortly before being picked by the primary as EELV’s presidential candidate, you had signed the Appeal for a Referendum on France’s Participation in the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons?
I don’t mean to twist the knife in the wound. Politics is a difficult art and we can all make mistakes. But I think the only way for EELV and yourself to compensate a little for your regrettable strategies (as I see them), to "save your furniture" or at least one big item after Macron becomes president (or even Marine Le Pen) is to engage actively in the urgent mobilisation for a referemdum on nuclear weapons (Mobilisation urgente pour obtenir un référendum sur les armes nucléaires.)
Now that Mélenchon is excluded, there is only one path, that of the shared-initiative referendum, that can impose on the new president a change to military and diplomatic policy (if the referendum succeeds). For that we need to get 185 signatures of parliamentarians, and we are currently 59 short. To lobby current senators and MPs before the end of this legislative session is practically the only means available. Could not the activists of EELV do that? Could not you, for example, approach Joël Labbé, the green senator for Morbihan, to get him to sign the Appel à référendum and the Referendum Bill (Proposition de Loi référendaire)? (**)
All of you, greenie activists, do you or do you not , « want France to negotiate and ratify with all the States concerned a treaty to ban and completely eliminate nuclear weapons, under mutual and international control that is strict and effective? » A treaty which 132 states are currently demanding and negotiating in the UN, without France being present... If yes, do what you can to be consulted and to have all our fellow-citizens consulted!
Again, likely for the last time, hoping it might be useful, I attach the texts for MPs and senators to sign. Please act on them.
As for the upcoming legislative elections, would not EELV be well advised to seek union with La France Insoumise at least as much as with the socialists? In any case, there are three questions to be put to all candidates for parliament:
1. « Do you want France to negotiate and ratify with all the States concerned a treaty to ban and completely eliminate nuclear weapons, under mutual and international control that is strict and effective? »
2. Do you commit, if elected, to support the holding of a referendum to put the above question to the French people, without delay after your election?
3. To prevent a French Chernobyl or Fukushima, do you commit to see France close down all her electric nuclear powerplants and start implementing during the next five years a quick transition towards electricity production without nuclear energy?
Cordialement.
Jean-Marie Matagne
PS. For those who still don’t know, Three French Citizens out of Four want to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
***
(*) Accord PS-EELV : la soupe et les lentilles seront radioactives; The Socialist-Green Agreement: The Soup and Lentils will be Radioactive
(**) Senators are significantly lacking. Now in April, 126 parliamentarians have signed the Referendum Bill, 104 MPs and only 22 senators. A train problem, perhaps... There is also a cruel shortage of rightwing MPs. How many of them calling themselves catholic yet are deaf to the Pope’s appeal? And finally, how many of them, the elected representatives of our people, will miss the train of history and cause France to miss it?
