NewLife

FRANCE: Candidates for the Socialist primary on deck ... Avignon

AFP - PS candidates for president, they are almost all directed at the Avignon Festival to display their taste for culture, one year before the election, and reconnect with artists and people of culture "have high expectations of the left" .

Friday, during a Liberation Forum, director Christophe Honoré Martine Aubry attack before an auditorium full: "In the 30 commitments PS, I have not seen the word art".

The mayor of Lille, on leave from his post as First Secretary of the Socialist Party, argues that the project in 2012 dealt with the "new economic, social and sustainable" and that the PS was then issued a "document on the culture."The candidate, who is eight days in Avignon, preferred to "discuss with the players."

Aubry is carving a successful, promising to increase "from 30 to 50%" the budget of the Culture. She accepts his proposals: support for the creation, places for artists ... She recalls his "excitement" at shows. "For me it is essentially the secret garden is what allows me to live."

"In my city, I did.If you trust me, I will do in our country, "she said.

Candidate also present, the deputy mayor Manuel Valls, a fellow musician, also boasts its action in Evry. For him, "the artists, men, women expect a lot of art from the left because they have to remember the years Mitterrand and Lang."

"Culture should be a priority (...) but we can not do the same again. The state can no longer finance large projects."Local authorities "if they can afford," will give impetus to cultural policies.

"Perhaps by telling the truth on public finances, on the culture, I mark my personality, maybe my difference," said Valls.

The playwright Jean-Michel Ribes, he meets in the aisles, he "felt in the left and PS real awareness that the ax will stop. The goal there has a new leftist president. " It will be "behind the chosen candidate or at full speed." Ideas "come, complement and make a real base to govern".

M. Ribes said he "yelled like a skunk" in reading the thirty. "In France, there is the left, right, center, and culture. There is a party that belongs to no one," he quips. However, cultures are more likely than "the automotive industry, including manufacturers," and people come over "in live shows at football!".

The press asked the director Denis Podalydès ("Conquest"): Avignon or the conquest of the alternative? Mr. Podalydès observed "a great movement to the left to reformulate the relationship between politics and world culture."He mentions "great depression" installed "in the early 90", "to which everyone gave up, left or right."

Another presidential candidate now, Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Left Front) that Judge Avignon "fun". "We can have discussions that are more than just discussions of means of programs. Do some philo what!" He said.

He will discuss with his former socialist comrades? "No interest. It is with the people of culture and creativity that must be discussed.I talk about anything with them? Their wretched culture of submission? "Joked the imprecator.

Green candidate, Eva Joly was also in Avignon, but absorbed by the controversy arose from his comments on the July 14 parade.

François Hollande happens to him, Sunday. Segolene Royal is in Poitou-Charentes and was at the Francofolies.