In a letter addressed to the French people at the end of June to explain his decision to call early legislative elections, Emmanuel Macron wrote: “Asking you to choose, to trust you, is that not the very meaning of our democracy and our Republic?” And to promise, faithful to his refrain: “Yes, the way of governing must change profoundly. The government to come […] will necessarily reflect your vote.”
The French chose well, albeit in a scattered manner, and from this electoral dispersion emerged a slim relative majority for this motley left-wing coalition that is the New Popular Front (NFP). But Mr. Macron refuses to listen to it and to “trust”, sticking to his vertical and centralized mode of governance. Not to take note of the defeat of his camp at the end of the 2e round of July 7, by not entrusting the NFP with the formation of the government, he has been pushing France for two months – out of pure pride, many deplore – into a state of deadlock and political confusion that dangerously undermines democratic reason. And gives ammunition to the National Rally (RN, far right). Mr. Macron will have called with all his heart, between the two rounds of the elections, for the formation of a “republican front” to block the meteoric rise of the RN, which was done, but then put forward nothing so that this common front of the center and the left would be embodied in the National Assembly in a government project. He showed irresponsibility by triggering legislative elections, in the name of an imperative of “clarification”, in the face of the RN’s rise in the European elections. By blocking today any idea of cohabitation with the political left and getting bogged down in his “consultations”, he is doing it again.
Mr Macron, whose term runs until 2027, is suffering from his stubbornness in public opinion: a poll conducted at the end of August by the firm Ipsos indicated that 51% of those questioned would like to see him resign. Nothing forces him to do so in the current order of things, whatever the founder of La France insoumise (LFI, radical left), Jean-Luc Mélenchon, may say, any more than the French Constitution sets a specific deadline for the president to appoint a prime minister. Above all, he finds himself objectively playing into the hands of the RN, which is far, due to the two-round electoral system, from having won the parliamentary majority it dreamed of in June, but which has nevertheless made significant progress, collecting 37% of the vote. Victory, Marine Le Pen declared on the evening of 2e tour, “is only deferred.” It is as if Mr. Macron is behaving in a way that proves him right. Watching his opponents tear each other apart, Mr.me Le Pen is rubbing his hands.
The “healthy game of democracy,” to use the words of the Worldwould however be for Macron to leave “the experience [d’un gouvernement du NFP] to take place at one’s own risk” – read at the risk of being immediately overthrown by a motion of censure in the National Assembly. This is not the “healthy game” that the president indulged in a week ago, when he rejected the candidacy for the post of Prime Minister of senior civil servant Lucie Castets, around whom the left had laboriously built a consensus. The fact that Mélenchon went so far as to sugarcoat the pill by raising the possibility that LFI, which arouses enormous antipathy within the political class, would not be part of the possible left-wing government has not changed anything.
Observers analyze that Macron’s behavior is due to his visceral opposition to the NFP’s economic program – which is nevertheless moderate, argues the online media. Mediapart. The big French company did not hold back this summer from stating that a left-wing government would lead to the “collapse” of the national economy. This demonization surely does not make a large number of French people, on the right as well as the left, forget the reality of the negative impact that pro-government policies have had on their wallets and on their social rights.business of the Macron era.
A complementary point of view is that the president, by stretching his consultations well beyond the usual deadlines, is not looking for a prime minister capable of bridging partisan tendencies, but above all for a political or “technical” personality who will not put up any resistance to him. The denial of democracy competes with the abuse of power. And many commentators are astounded to see Mr. Macron engage in such a circus. If the legislative elections were an opportunity for exasperated French people to express a need for change, this president is giving no sign of really wanting to form a government that “will necessarily reflect” the result of the vote, nor of “profoundly changing” his way of governing. To date, well-established in his hyper-presidentialism, he is instead cultivating political uncertainty while the RN lies in wait.