Can the political deadlock turn into an institutional crisis?

No agreement on the left, Tuesday July 9, on a candidate for the post of Prime Minister, no stable majority in the Assembly, can the political deadlock turn into an institutional crisis and deal the final blow to a Fifth Republic that is out of breath? The instability promises to last as long as neither the left bloc nor the central bloc are able to rally enough reinforcements to approach or reach the absolute majority of 289 seats. The attitude of the New Popular Front sums up the current impasse. The left is begging Emmanuel Macron to call on it to govern, but it is unable to agree on a name for Matignon. It only has 182 deputies, but it claims to govern alone, with 49-3 or even “decrees”, according to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, which is exactly the criticism it made of the Macronists, who had 250 deputies. She implores the same Macronists not to censure a minority government, while she herself voted for around twenty motions of censure against the Borne and then Attal governments.

The tripartition, the division of the hemicycle into three blocks – left, center and extreme right – has overcome the majority fact. From then on, two outcomes remain: either a change in practices, or a change in texts. The first requires that our country converts to the culture of coalition in force among most of our European neighbors and that the forces of the left, center and right agree to talk to each other and negotiate to form a majority. Impossible as long as the left does not free itself from the tutelage of the Insoumis for whom to discuss is already to betray. By assuring that it only wants to implement the program of the New Popular Front, the left shows that it has already forgotten that it owes its narrow success to the republican front. Just as Emmanuel Macron had forgotten for two years that he too owed his re-election only to the same republican front.

So there remains the change of texts. Failing to change morals, a vast reform of the institutions to rebalance the powers of the President of the Republic and Parliament. It would be coupled with the establishment of proportional representation which pushes the parties to dialogue and coalition. A Sixth Republic that the Head of State could initiate via Article 11 of the Constitution, that is to say the referendum. General de Gaulle used it once successfully to establish the election of the president by universal suffrage in 1962, before failing seven years later to reform the Senate and create the regions. A defeat which had caused his departure from power. This is to say that Emmanuel Macron could only handle this tool with caution, to get out of a long deadlock, for which he could attribute the responsibility to his opponents.