“Monarchical format”, “soliloquy”… The doubtful oppositions

A few hours before Emmanuel Macron’s major press conference, opposition deputies are expressing their doubts.

For his “meeting with the nation”, Emmanuel Macron chooses a major press conference. The start is scheduled for 8:15 p.m. Tuesday evening, in front of several hundred journalists, a long interview with the Head of State lasting at least two hours after an introductory speech lasting around fifteen minutes. In the National Assembly, opposition deputies are disappointed in advance.

It’s the return of this adage of oppositions: “Not seen yet, already disappointed.” They know the exercise of giving a meeting to the nation well in six years of Emmanuel Macron’s mandate: great debate, meetings in Saint-Denis, national council for refoundation…

Doubts on the merits

And yet, for Les Républicains MP Pierre-Henri Dumont, there is a need to get out of the vagueness: “Let the President of the Republic chart a course! We do not know what the government’s responses are to improve the purchasing power, particularly of those who work. We are in this waiting situation. The reality is that we have the impression that there is really no direction.”

Some deputies have not wiped the slate clean in recent months, like the communist Pierre Dharréville. “Let him apologize for all the bad things he has done to our country over the past weeks, months and years, asks the chosen one. Let him make honorable amends on this bad, unconstitutional, anti-Republican immigration law, on this very bad law destroying the right to retirement. I’m a little doubtful, I have to tell you.” But there is no question of going back, Tuesday evening: theElysée talks about other themes such as public policies, health, education and ecology, with a second part devoted to the international.

Doubts about the format

The deputies are doubtful and the word is weak to hear the rebellious deputy, close to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Paul Vannier: “It’s a monarchical format. It’s the president-king who flees the people, who doesn’t go to meet them even though he promised.”

“It is an all-powerful president-king who speaks before the Prime Minister, before a government which is still in formation and whose road map we do not know, which therefore undermines our democracy, the functioning of our Republic, to the balance of powers… It is one more threshold which has been crossed in Macronist authoritarianism”, concluded the deputy.

Oppositions require a vote of confidence, as is customary whenever a government is appointed. But this option seems ruled out for the moment. LFI threatens to table a motion of censure if this is not the case. A motion which will most certainly be voted for by a large part of the left.

“The nation is not the mirror of Mr. Macron”

As for the National Rally, it is also the form of the presidential exercise on Tuesday evening which outrages MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy: “We were in an environment where we were talking about a referendum, about directly consulting the French, about taking a democratic initiative. If the big meeting with the nation is a soliloquy or a monologue of Mr. Macron with himself, and the questions authorized journalists – since press freedom with Mr. Macron in this type of exercise is unfortunately very limited – I believe that we are very far from a meeting with the nation. The nation is not the mirror, even distorting, of Mr. Macron.”

Let us remember, however, that 300 to 400 journalists are invited and that no question will be reread by the Élysée before this face-to-face meeting between Emmanuel Macron and the media.