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France Socialist Party to expel defect ex-PM after offer to back Macron's party

Xinhua, May 10, 2017 Adjust font size:

Head of the French Socialist Party Jean-Christophe Cambadelis said Wednesday he had launched a procedure to expel ex-prime minister Manuel Valls from the party after Valls offered to back Emmanuel Macron's movement in the upcoming parliamentary election.

"A procedure is under way, Manuel Valls has been referred to the conflict committee," Cambadelis told Beur FM radio.

Valls, who failed to book a ticket for the Elysee Palace in the left primary earlier this year, announced Tuesday he would join the new president Macron's "La Republique En Marche" (Republic On the Move) movement in the parliamentary election next month.

"This Socialist party is dead. It is behind us. The essential thing today is to give a broad and coherent majority ... to Emmanuel Macron to allow him to govern," he told RTL radio.

Valls's decision has triggered the anger of the Socialists who are trying to build a majority in the legislative after taking a severe blow in the presidential election outcome.

"Now everyone knows what a commitment made by a man like Manuel Valls is worth: Nothing, which is what a man without honor is worth," Arnaud Montebourg, former economy minister, wrote on his Twitter account.

However, despite Valls's enthusiasm for Macron's movement, the Republic On the Move camp were unmoved by his show of support.

"We are well aware of the courage he (Valls) has shown to leave a socialist party which is now breaking down. We think that it is not necessarily opportune for the 'Republic On the Move' movement to integrate this application, whatever the past," Jean-Paul Delevoye, who chooses Macron's party candidates, told Europe 1 radio.

"As of today, he (Valls) does not fit the criteria that would allow the investiture committee to take him on, so..., (until he joins) the national investiture committee that I preside over cannot consider the candidature of Mr. Valls," he added.

Richard Ferrand, the centrist party's chief, said Monday that the names of the movement's 577 candidates in the legislative election would be unveiled on Thursday.

Created in 2016 and described as "neither right nor left," Republic On The Move has no representatives in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament.

An OpinionWay-SLPV Analytics poll released earlier in May showed president-elect Macron's party winning a majority in the parliamentary election with 249 to 286 seats, taking into account only France mainland constituencies, or 535 of 577 seats in the National Assembly.

Conservatives and centrist allies would emerge as the second main party in the country's lower house of parliament with 200 to 210 seats, while the Socialist Party would win only 28 to 43 seats.

The far-right National Front party, which is building momentum following public anger at the political mainstream over failed economic promises, would snatch up 15 to 25 seats.

An absolute majority in the National Assembly is 289 seats.

France's two-round legislative competition is scheduled for June 11 to 18. Endit