Pierre Juquin

Vocation

French communist politician and trade unionist. He was elected to the French National Assembly for Essonne and, in 1967, became a full member of the PCF Central Committee. Voted out of the Essonne seat in 1968, he regained the position in 1973 - and was re-elected until 1981; an observer to the Politburo in 1979, he joined the body in 1982, and was assigned leadership of the press and propaganda bureau. He was excluded from the Politburo in October 1984, and publicly disagreed with decisions taken at the 25th Party Congress of February 1985. His opposition was tolerated until October 1987, when he was excluded from the Party altogether - after he had expressed his wish to run for French Presidency on his own platform. Thus, Juquin ran in the 1988 presidential election with backing from the Unified Socialist Party (PSU) and the Revolutionary Communist League, grouping a sizable following of former PCF members, trotskyists, various Greens, and non-committed left-wingers. Despite the creation of numerous Support Committees, he only managed to obtain 2.08% of the votes. His movement survived as the New Left for Socialism, Ecology and Self-management, which fused with the PSU to form Red and Green Alternatives (nowadays known as Les Alternatifs). Link to Wikipedia biography