Dissolution, first round, second round, coalition, presidential majority, etc. I understand you, Aunt Monique, for telling me on social media that you didn’t understand anything. So let’s try to clarify things a little.
Let us first return to what characterizes the French political system, described as “semi-presidential”, a system situated between the American presidential system and the Canadian parliamentary system. In the first, there is a strict separation between the powers of the president and his government (the executive branch, which implements the laws) and those of the deputies and senators (the legislative branch, which develops and adopts the laws). In the second, which we know in Quebec and Canada, the party or parties that obtain a majority of deputies in the elections form the government and run the “country”. It can also govern if it is in the minority when it receives the support of another party: this is currently the case in Canada between the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party.
Of course, the French have a different system. Don’t worry, Monique, you’re probably not the only one who’s lost your Latin. In France, the president is elected by universal suffrage, like the president of the United States, but he must appoint a government from the party or parties that won the majority in the legislative elections. This leads to situations in which the president governs with a government (prime minister and ministers) from his political party, while other times, he must govern with a “coalition government”, that is, with a prime minister and ministers who are not solely from his political party.
With regard to this second case, it should be noted that the distribution of powers between the president and the government is specified in the Constitution. For example, it is the president who takes care of international relations, while the government takes care of “internal affairs”.
After a certain defeat of his party in the European elections, President Emmanuel Macron wanted to check whether he still had the support of the population to have a government resulting from a majority of deputies from his party, but a “coup de théâtre” came from his left. While the political parties of this tendency appeared weakened and divided, they agreed to form a new coalition, the New Popular Front. Thus, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Ecologists and the party of Jean-Luc Mélanchon, La France insoumise, presented single candidates in the first round.
Yes, this story of first and second rounds does not help, I grant you that. To win in the first round, you have to get more than 50% of the votes, and to go to the second round, the candidates must get more than 12.5%. This could lead to elections with more than two candidates, so the political parties on the right and the left publicly announced that they would withdraw from the second round when there were three people in the election, including one from the National Rally (RN), the far-right party. There was then talk of a republican front in opposition to the authoritarian ideological roots of the RN. The objective was to make the RN candidates lose, as they had come out on top in the first round with 34%, which raised fears that they would obtain a majority and form the government.
Last Sunday’s results (of the second round, therefore) gave a completely different picture. The New Popular Front came out on top, with the National Rally only coming in third place. However, no political party obtained an absolute majority, that is to say more than half of the seats in the National Assembly. This means that the political parties will have to agree among themselves to pass laws, but also to form a new government capable of governing.
We will know in the coming days or weeks how President Macron will get out of this mess, but in the meantime, dear Monique, this gives you time to continue to form an idea of what the French population has just been through.