"We Want it to Change, and Really to Change"

" (...) We intend to win, to build an approach to a majority vocation on a program of rupture with neo-liberalism, and within this framework to put in place a policy of social transformation. We want to gather the anti-liberal forces on the Left, and to create a popular and citizen dynamic around a project, a strategy, and common candidates for the presidential and legislative elections. We want the ideas of rupture with liberalism and of an alternative to become those of the majority of the Left and of the nation. We intend to encourage social mobilization, to influence them by our political action, and to create a political scene of action for this resistance. (...)

Our objective is a political platform bringing long-lasting solutions to the great problems of our society, responding to the needs and aspirations of the people, in which the constitution of a majority and a left-wing government will lead to a rupture with neo-liberalism and the development of a politics of social, environmental and democratic transformation. We will not be part of a government dominated by social-liberalism that, by its composition and by its platform, will not provide the means to break with liberalism, nor the means to respond to what is expected of us. The Socialist Party, in particular, has adopted a program that has frankly turned its back on a rupture with liberalism. It is out of the question, for us, to negotiate on that basis a contract for government of which the action, leading once again to disillusion, will lead ineluctably to the return to a right wing government more rigid than ever. Similarly, it is out of the question to accept the idea proposed by the Socialist Party for "a federation of the Left", organized around such an orientation. We begin debate with our people and with all the forces of the Left on our political program of rupture with neo-liberalism, in order to work to increase the popular dynamics in favor of change. (...)

We mean to provide energy to a new popular political dynamic, an enduring unity of all the anti-liberal forces on the Left, in convergence with all who are fighting for emancipation. (...)

In the case where we do not participate in the government, our group at the National Assembly will not participate in a majority put together in order to support the government, but will vote in favor of all suggested laws that go in a sense that coincides with the public interest. (...)

In the presidential and legislative elections, if our candidate does not arrive in first place among candidates on the Left for the first tour of the election, we will mobilize all our forces to defeat the Right and Extreme Right, voting for the candidate in best position on the Left, without pre-conditions or negotiation of a political agreement between the two tours."

Translator’s note. Related articles:

Hope is Present at the Meeting of Anti-liberal Forces

A provisional group of spokespersons

The decisions taken in Saint-Denis

Our engagement is an encouragement to unity