Look up NPA or nPa in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

NPA may refer to:

Organizations and companies[link]

• National PACE Association, an association in the United States that promotes home care for seniors
• National park authority, a term used in the United Kingdom for the legal body in charge of a national park
• National Parks Association (disambiguation)
• National People's Army, the armed forces of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR)
• National Pasta Association, an association for the United States pasta industry
• National Physicians Alliance, a multi-specialty medical organization in the United States
• National Pigeon Association, an association in the United States that promotes the Pigeon keeping hobby
• Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy, Indian national institute for training of Indian Police Service (IPS) officers
• National Police Agency (disambiguation)
• National Port Authority, Liberia
• National Postdoctoral Association, an organization for postdoctoral researchers in the United States
• National Prescription Administrators, a former pharmaceutical company in the United States
• Natural Philosophy Alliance, a group that believes mainstream physics and cosmology are wrong
• Network Printing Alliance, a group of printer manufacturers
• Network Professional Association, an advocate for the international network computing professional in the United States
• Nigerian Ports Authority, a government agency that governs and operates the ports of Nigeria
• Norwegian People's Aid, a non-governmental labour and humanitarian organization in Norway
• Note Printing Australia, a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia
• Transnet National Ports Authority of South Africa
• Fugro NPA, a UK remote sensing company

Politics[link]

• National Party of Australia, an Australian political party
• National Production Authority, a former agency of the United States government for defense mobilization from 1950 to 1953
• National Prosecuting Authority, a governing body of the Republic of South Africa
• New People's Army, armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines
• No Party Affiliation, a voter or politician who is not affiliated with any political party
• Non-Party Affiliate, a politician who is not affiliated with any political party
• Non-Partisan Association, a civic political party in Vancouver, British Columbia
• Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste, a far-left French political party formed from the former Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire

Science and medicine[link]

• N-Propyl-L-arginine, a chemical substance
• Nanopascal (nPa), a unit of pressure
• Nasopharyngeal airway, a tube that is designed to be inserted into the nasal passageway
• Niemann–Pick disease type A, a genetic disorder

Miscellaneous[link]

• Naval Air Station Pensacola (airport code), Pensacola, Florida
• Northcoast Preparatory and Performing Arts Academy, a high school in Arcata, California
• List of North American Numbering Plan area codes, also known as "Numbering Plan Areas"
• Notice of Proposed Amendment, a publication that precedes any amendment of the Joint Aviation Requirements (JAR)
• .NET Persistence API, also known as NPersistence

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Olivier Besancenot
Olivier Besancenot
Born	(1974-04-18) 18 April 1974 (age 38) Levallois-Perret in the Hauts-de-Seine
Nationality	French
Education	Degree in History
Alma mater	Paris X (Nanterre)
Occupation	Postman
Employer	La Poste
Known for	Opposition leader
Political party	Revolutionary Communist League (1988–2009) New Anti-Capitalist Party

Olivier Besancenot (French pronunciation: [olivje bəzɑ̃səˈno]) (born on 18 April 1974) is a French far left political figure and trade unionist, and the founding main spokesperson of the New Anticapitalist Party (Nouveau parti anticapitaliste, NPA) from 2009 to 2011.

He was a candidate for the 2007 French presidential election, for the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR), the French section of the Fourth International. He gained 1.2 million votes, 4.25%, standing as a revolutionary socialist in the 2002 presidential elections. In the first round of the 2007 presidential election, Besancenot received 4.08% of the vote, just short of 1.5 million votes, placing him fifth and eliminating him from the race.

In May 2011, Besancenot announced that he would not be standing in the 2012 presidential election. He is succeeded as main spokesperson of the NPA by Myriam Martin and Christine Poupin.

Biography[link]

Olivier Besancenot was born on 18 April 1974 in Levallois-Perret in the Hauts-de-Seine region. His father, Michel Besancenot, was a teacher and his mother a psychologist at a school.

He studied history at University of Paris X (Nanterre), gaining a degree in contemporary history. Since 1997 he has worked as a postal carrier in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, and is often dismissed by his right-wing opponents as "The Red Postman."

Stance[link]

Along with Alain Krivine and Roseline Vachetta, Besancenot is one of three spokespersons for the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR), a far left political party which is the French section of the reunified Fourth International, an international Trotskyist group.

Besancenot, however, eschews the Trotskyist label:

I'm neither Trotskyist nor Guevarist or Luxemburgist, I'm a revolutionary. And revolution needs to be reinvented, for no revolutionary experiment has ever succeeded. Some of them ended up as bloody caricatures.^[1]

Political life[link]

Besancenot supporters, brandishing the red flags of the Communist Revolutionary League, overflowing in front of La Mutualité in Paris, where Olivier Besancenot was holding a meeting

Besancenot's engagement in left-wing politics started early. He joined the Revolutionary Communist Youth (Jeunesses communistes révolutionnaires, or JCR) in 1988 when he was fourteen.

When at university studying for his history licence he formed a branch of the Confédération générale du travail trade union in the supermarket, Shopi, where he worked.

In 1991 he joined the LCR. Since 1997 he has been a member of the Sud-PTT trade union. He took a break from his job at the postal services in 1999 and 2000 to serve as a parliamentary attaché to Alain Krivine in the European Parliament.

In 2001 and 2002, he participated in the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre. He gained national prominence when he stood for the 2002 French presidential election. At twenty-eight, he was the youngest presidential candidate in the country's history. Standing on a revolutionary socialist platform he gained 1.3 million votes, 4.25% of the total. Among voters under the age of 25 he gained 13.9 percent, beating Lionel Jospin and Jean-Marie Le Pen.^[2] In the run-up to the second round of voting, Besancenot urged voters to ensure that the far-right Le Pen did not gain power, by re-electing Jacques Chirac, despite his own misgivings about Chirac's political positions.^[3]

Besancenot ran again for the 2007 presidential election. Besancenot slogan throughout the campaign was Nos vies valent plus que leurs profits ("Our lives are worth more than their profits"); and he campaigned for redistribution of wealth, an increase in the minimum wage, prohibition of layoffs for profitable companies, and taxation of profits from capital speculation. He stood for political and electoral independence of the anti-capitalist left from the Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste, PS) and against its participation in a centre-left government. Besancenot was endorsed by British filmmaker Ken Loach, known for depictions of working-class struggles.^[4] His campaign's closing rally, in Paris, was attended by 4,000, the largest meeting organised by the LCR or its predecessors since 1968.^[5] Besancenot gained 1,498,581 votes or 4.08%, around 300,000 votes more than 2002.^[6] He is the first in votes and in dominant position among candidates to the left of the Socialist Party's candidate, Ségolène Royal.^[7] For the second round of the elections, Besancenot, after calling for participation stated that "On 6 May, we will be on the side of those who want to prevent Nicolas Sarkozy from attaining the presidency of the republic. It is not a matter of supporting Ségolène Royal but voting against Nicolas Sarkozy.", fighting the Right in the street as well as at the ballot boxes.^[6] After the victory of Sarkozy in the second round, Besancenot and LCR call for "a united front of all the social and democratic forces [...] to organise a response faced to the extreme neoliberal and repressive programme of Sarkozy."^[8]

This led, in June 2008, to the launching of the New Anticapitalist Party (Nouveau parti anticapitaliste, NPA), intended to unify the parties and movements of the far left.^[9] The party aims to field its first electoral candidates at the 2009 EU parliamentary elections.^[10] Whilst plans were being put in place for the formation of this party, Besancenot was able to capitalise on the infighting occurring in the PS in the summer of 2008, as its members prepared to convene at La Rochelle for their annual party leadership contest. His popularity continued to increase, as he remonstrated the PS for focusing its attention on him, and not the incumbent president, Sarkozy. Besancenot told French TV, a medium in which he found himself in greater demand, that, "It's up to the population to get there [force a revolution] one way or another"; he also told a LCR conference that the left had been failing in its opposition.^[10] One poll showed Besancenot's approval rating to be at 47%, far exceeding two of the main candidates for the PS leadership, Royal (35%) and François Hollande (31%). It was suggested in some media that, were Besancenot and the NPA to convert their popularity into votes (gaining up to a 7 or 8 per cent share), a splintering of the left-wing in France between Marxists and pro-marketeers, similar to that which occurred at the 2002 presidential elections, could happen.^[11][12][13]

The "Besancenot affair"[link]

In October 2008, seven people—including the leader of the Taser France company, the two leaders of a private detective agency, two police officers, a retired police officer, a customs officer and one other person—were arrested and charged with several offences related to their having allegedly spied on Besancenot and his family, including the illicit divulging of information on his private life, the violation of professional secrecy and "fraudulent access to automated data processing systems". They were accused of having spied on them between October 2007 and January 2008. The "Besancenot affair", as it was called, received significant media attention.^{[14][15][16][17]} Libération commented, the day before the charges were confirmed: "A businessman who sells weapons to the Ministry of the Interior arrested, that's very disorderly. Particularly when he may be suspected of having had one of the most prominent politicians trailed by a private company directed by a former police officer."^[18]

Published works[link]

• Tout est à nous ! (2002), ISBN 2-207-25309-0, Denoël
• Révolution ! 100 mots pour changer le monde (2003), ISBN 2-290-33828-1, Flammarion
• Che Guevara: His Revolutionary Legacy (2009), ISBN 978-1-58367-177-1, Monthly Review Press, with Michael Löwy.
• Prenons Parti pour un socialisme du XXIe siècle (2009), Mille et une nuits, with Daniel Bensaïd.

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Olivier Besancenot

• Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR)
• The reunified Fourth International
• New Anticapitalist Party
• Sud-PTT

References[link]

v t e Candidates in the 2007 French presidential election Winner Nicolas Sarkozy Lost in runoff Ségolène Royal Other candidates François Bayrou Olivier Besancenot José Bové Marie-George Buffet Arlette Laguiller Frédéric Nihous Jean-Marie Le Pen Gérard Schivardi Philippe de Villiers Dominique Voynet

Philippe Poutou in June 2011

Philippe Poutou (French pronunciation: [filip putu]; born 17 March 1967 in Villemomble, Seine-Saint-Denis) is a French far left political figure and trade unionist, and worker in a car factory.

He is secretary of the General Confederation of Labour at the Ford Motor Company in the région of Aquitaine, and is a worker in that industry. In 2007, he played a leading role in union negotiations with the company over the potential axing of 2000 jobs, and was a union spokesman to the media.^[1][2]

He led the Revolutionary Communist League in the 2007 legislative election, where it obtained 2.7% of the vote (and no seats in the National Assembly), then led its successor party, the New Anticapitalist Party, during the 2010 regional elections in his home region of Aquitaine. He obtained 2.52% of the vote.^[1][2]

In June 2011, he was chosen by the New Anticapitalist Party as its candidate for the 2012 presidential election. Media noted that he was virtually unknown to the public, and that he might find it difficult to succeed previous candidate Olivier Besancenot, a well recognised figure popular beyond the party itself. He would, in addition, have to contend with divisions within the party over whether to engage more with the Left Front, with an aim to unify the political forces on the left of the centre-left Socialist Party.^[1][2] For much of the campaign, he remained little known to the general public; he was described as lacking Besancenot's popularity, charisma and ease with words. Freely admitting that he did not particularly want to be a candidate, and that he did not aim to be elected (particularly as one of his policies was to abolish the function of President, in favour of a fully parliamentary system), he saw his profile and popularity increase somewhat in the late stages of the campaign, when all candidates obtained equal airtime in the media. In particular, his unconventional behaviour drew attention during the television programme Des paroles et des actes (fr), along with his unusual campaign clips - such as one based on the film The Artist, or another parodying the gameshow Questions pour un champion and playing on the fact that Poutou remained little-known to the public. Like Trotskyist candidate Nathalie Arthaud, his message was that improvements in workers' rights would come through workers' struggles and demands rather than through the ballot box.^{[3] [4][5] [6] [7] [8]} Obtaining 1.15% of the vote, finishing eighth out of ten, Poutou called upon voters to "vote against Sarkozy" in the second round. The press partly explained his low result by the fact that Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of the Left Front, had attracted the bulk of voters on the "left of the left".^{[9] [10]} Poutou explained that, while he hoped Hollande would win rather than Sarkozy, the New Anticapitalist Party would have to help build an "opposition on the left" to the new government.^{[11] [12]}

References[link]