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Melenchon: the leftist aiming for ‘pharaoh’ Macron

After decades of railing against the French establishment, hard-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon suddenly finds himself the closest thing the country has to a leader of the opposition.

Published: 23 September 2017 09:50 CEST

Melenchon: the leftist aiming for 'pharaoh' Macron

Jean Luc Melanchon won a seat in the national assembly in June. Photo: Bertand Langlois/AFP

But his curmudgeonly image belies a charisma that helped him win a surge in support in this year's presidential election, finishing fourth in the vote that brought Emmanuel Macron to power.

Melenchon went on to win a seat in the national assembly in June, leading the 17 MPs from his France Unbowed party into parliament with raised fists and shouts of “Resistance!”

Since then, despite leading only the fifth-biggest party in parliament, he has carved out a position as the main voice of opposition to Macron's pro-business agenda, blasting his labour reforms as a “social welfare coup
d'etat”.

“We represent the alternative to the world that you represent,” he told Prime Minister Edouard Philippe after hearing the new government set out its policy plans.

The mainstream Socialists and rightwing Republicans are both leaderless and adrift after Macron's centrists won a landslide – leaving Melenchon with a platform he has wasted no time in using.

The high-tax, high-spend leftist is set to lead a major anti-government protest Saturday, calling on supporters to “lash” Paris.

He has accused “Macron the pharaoh” of monarchical leanings, describing the ex-investment banker – with horror – as Britain's New Labour prime minister Tony Blair and arch-conservative predecessor Margaret Thatcher “rolled into one”.

'Power to the people'

Born in Morocco, Melenchon studied philosophy and was a Trotskyist student activist before joining the Socialists at 25 and becoming the youngest member of the Senate in 1986.

He served as vocational education minister under Socialist premier Lionel Jospin from 2000 to 2002.

But in 2008, Melenchon fell out with party leader Francois Hollande and quit the Socialists, saying “our country needs another voice on the left”.

The divorced father-of-one launched his first presidential campaign four years later, claiming a modest 11 percent at the head of the Left Party.

But he boosted that to 19 percent this year under his new France Unbowed brand, tapping into widespread disillusionment with the political class and putting in strong debate performances.

He likes to stress that he was “just 600,000” votes away from qualifying for the run-off round of the presidential election – which could have seen him go on to win the presidency.

A passionate orator known for speaking without notes, Melenchon took far-right leader Marine Le Pen to task throughout the campaign, challenging her hard line on immigration.

And he ran a tech-savvy campaign, projecting holograms of himself to simultaneous rallies in multiple cities and exploiting his 1.4 million-strong Twitter following.

Melenchon vowed to return “power to the people”, promising a revamped European Union and a €100 billion ($107 billion) stimulus package.

An anti-imperialist admirer of Venezuela's late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, he has been loath to criticise its current government, accused by international powers of dismantling democracy.

Canny operator

After 30 years as a canny political operative, some have suggested his current prominent positioning is the result of astute manoeuvring as he benefits from disarray in the Socialist party.

He has also spotted a new opportunity in the infighting rocking Le Pen's National Front as it, too, struggles to decide on a direction after this year's election defeats.

He has urged those disillusioned with mainstream politics and globalisation to switch over from Le Pen's far-right to his hard-left, saying those who are “angry but not fascists” are welcome.

In the meantime, whether it is deploring cuts to subsidised jobs or demanding a parliamentary inquiry into poor preparations for Hurricane Irma, he seems determined to doggedly challenge Macron's agenda.

“This is where the opposing power is,” wrote Alain Duhamel in the newspaper Liberation this week. “This is where the counter-presidency is.”

By Katy Lee

Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.