The President of the Republic announced, Monday January 10 in Nice, a big plan for the security, including 15 billion additional over the next 5 years. He is, however, officially still not a candidate for his own succession.
And it is true that this posture of president not yet candidate is very practical! As long as he has not officially announced his desire to run for a second term, Emmanuel Macron can continue to wrap himself in the prestige and the height that the function confers on him. He is obviously not the first president to use this stratagem: almost all of them have taken advantage of this period of vagueness preceding their 2nd campaign, when there was the 2nd campaign.
But this position does not come without a price to pay: you have to be able to announce your proposals without being able to accept them, which considerably complicates the task of supporters and spokespersons. Like this response from Gérald Darmanin when asked on RTL if this plan is a promise from candidate Macron: “We are preparing, whether for this majority or for another … we are preparing and this is quite normal, the work of the police in the 2030s. It is quite logical: the cyberattack does not wait for the election presidential. And then, it is democracy we will see who will carry this text. “
So, on the form, we understand the discomfort of the Minister of the Interior, who is forced to repeat several times “it is quite normal, it is quite logical”. There is a simple rule in rhetoric: if you have to clarify something, it is because it was not taken for granted! And so, in this case, the more Gérald Darmanin repeats that he is “logical and normal” to see a president make a proposal over five years in the last months of his mandate, the more we understand that there is eel under the rock.
On the merits now, the argument of the Minister of the Interior does not hold a second. “We present the law: we will see which government will put it in place”, said in essence Gerald Darmanin. As if a president could afford to decide the policy of his successor! We must all the same measure the audacity of this declaration of the Minister of the Interior: he confuses, here, politics and administration and acts as if the security of the French was only a matter of management, and not decision-making.
All this is obviously a contortion for not having conceded that on Monday, Emmanuel Macron announced his campaign program in terms of security. Perhaps it would be time, quite simply, to assume it!