From the National Rally to the Insoumis via the Greens or LR, all the parties have one objective: to soap the board of the Head of State. No question of giving him a hand, even indirectly, and therefore no question of accepting to exchange, to dialogue. In this boiling return to school, it is time for frontal opposition, without concession, an attitude also adopted by certain unions such as the CGT, Force Ouvrière or the FSU.
It is a risky strategy. The empty chair policy is always dangerous. Especially when it comes to discussing issues as heavy and which touch so closely on the daily concerns of the French people as education, health, the climate, full employment and “ageing well”, five themes on the program of this CNR.
The Elysée prefers to emphasize the forty present, such as the associations of elected officials, the CFDT, the FNSEA or the CPME. The risk for the boycotting opponents is to appear as sectarian at a time when the addition of energy, social and climatic crises would justify pragmatism and the search for consensus. For the opposition, there is a real contradiction: on the one hand, it demands more dialogue in the National Assembly, where the executive only has a relative majority; on the other, she refuses to take part in the debates of the CNR.
Gérard Larcher criticizes the CNR for wanting to bypass Parliament. A rather surprising posture, firstly because the CNR must give birth to “shared findings” and a working method, but the law will of course continue to be made in Parliament. Gérard Larcher opposes participatory democracy and parliamentary democracy, as if the first could not contribute to regenerating the second. In view of the record abstention rates in the elections, there is even urgency.
Let us recall in passing that the Senate is not a democratic model: senators are only elected by a handful of electors. In fact, with this boycott, we see that the main engine of opposition, on the right and on the left, remains anti-Macronism. And it is also an admission of weakness. Because this attitude did not prevent the president from being re-elected. In 2027, he will no longer be there to serve as a target. The opponents who claim to succeed him will have to find new ideas.