There was something surreal about the scene. Like the American president in front Air Force One, Emmanuel Macron, on the tarmac of Orly airport, spoke to the press in front of the presidential plane before flying to Romania. A few days before the second round of the legislative elections where his absolute majority in the National Assembly is at stake, the President called for a “republican start” in order, he said, to “defend our institutions against all those who challenge them and weaken”. However, the average voter wondered, if “we are at the time of choice” and that “no voice must be missing from the Republic”, why the hell did the president take the plane instead of campaigning?
“Sketch à la Trump”, mocked Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose New Popular, Ecologist and Socialist Alliance (NUPES) risks electing, according to the latest Opinion Way poll, between 165 and 210 deputies (out of 577). Not enough to exercise power or become prime minister, as his posters proclaim. After the victory on Sunday evening, the enthusiasm nevertheless seems to have fallen to the left in front of the few reserves of votes available to her in the second round.
With 25% of the votes in the first round, the left recorded one of its worst results in a legislative. She is even several points below her presidential score. Nevertheless, the only one to really campaign, the leader of the Insoumis seems on the point of electing the main contingent of opposition deputies to the National Assembly. This should include figures known for their controversial statements and regular calls to take to the streets, such as Raquel Garrido, Danièle Obono and Alexis Corbière.
Macron as a warlord
Leaving for Romania on Tuesday and returning to Paris overnight from Thursday to Friday, Emmanuel Macron will have chosen purely and simply to step over this second round which is taking place in an atmosphere of democratic apathy rarely seen in a legislative election. In the political class, we suspect the president of replicating the recipe for the presidential election and donning his warlord costume for the sole purpose of giving himself height and avoiding campaigning.
Will the results prove him right? Still according to Opinion Way, the presidential party, renamed Together, would be in the process of obtaining between 275 and 305 seats. The majority being 289, nothing allows him for the moment to have the assurance that he will be able to govern alone as has been the case over the past five years. This is the ambivalence of this presidential election since, according to another Odoxa Backbone Consulting poll, 70% of French people do not want him to obtain an absolute majority on Sunday. Elected to “block” the candidate of the populist right Marine Le Pen, the president seems to “pay” in the legislative for this lack of mobilization around his own program.
“The French voted Emmanuel Macron by default”, writes the editor-in-chief of the Review of two worlds, Valerie Toranian. “The score of the [NUPES] and the Rassemblement national in the legislative elections is a way of influencing their vote. By blank check for Jupiter. We don’t want an additional five years of reign, locked up in an ivory tower. This is the meaning of this desire for cohabitation which was expressed just after the presidential election. »
It remains to be seen whether this desire will be expressed at the polls on Sunday or simply by a historic abstention, as was the case in the first round (53%). One thing is certain, since they are held immediately after the presidential election, we have never seen a president not score better in the legislative elections.
“The house is burning, and Emmanuel Macron is looking elsewhere. To imagine him on a train heading for Ukraine this morning when the far left is hyper-threatening to our country is madness,” said the mayor of Meaux, Jean-François Copé, a supporter of a “ pact” between Les Républicains and Together. The concern is all the more real as several government leaders, such as the Minister Delegate responsible for Europe, Clément Beaune, and that of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, risk in the event of defeat having to resign. Even if she is not in danger in her constituency of Calvados, the Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, could go down in history as being the worst elected of all the Ve Republic.
What alliances?
Speculation abounds on the compromises that the president will have to make in the event of a relative majority. He will first have to seek the support of his natural allies, François Bayrou, of the MoDem, and Édouard Philippe, of the Horizon party. We know that relations are not looking good between the president and his former prime minister. If that is not enough, Emmanuel Macron could be forced to negotiate an agreement with Les Républicains, transforming them into “kingmakers”. Despite a meeting at the Élysée with the dean of LR, Senator Gérard Larcher, all week the leaders of LR have denied the possibility of an agreement.
Last option, the government could decide to navigate on sight by forging temporary alliances on a case-by-case basis, on the right or on the left. This is what François Mitterrand did from 1988 to 1991, when his prime minister was Michel Rocard.
Even if the fact seems to go unnoticed, this election is far from being a failure for the National Rally. Not only should he form a parliamentary group for the first time in the Assembly, but his score has increased by 5.5% compared to that of 2017.
Of the president’s agenda, we know almost nothing, except that on June 22 he is preparing to launch the work of the National Council for Refoundation. Described as a “gadget”, a “masquerade” and a “big talk” by the opposition, this consultation body, which will include representatives of political parties, trade unions and citizens chosen by lot, must work on the main reforms of the five year term. Its initials are intended as an undisguised allusion to the famous National Resistance Council which, in the midst of the war, had prepared the major institutional reform that followed the Liberation.
End of reign tunes
Emmanuel Macron’s second term has barely begun and he already looks like the end of his reign. The interval between the two rounds was marked by the scandal of savage attacks at the Stade de France. Three weeks after her appointment, the Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, who was to lead this campaign between the two rounds, did not go to support any candidate and seems inaudible. The thunderous voice of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, though in the minority at the polls, had no difficulty occupying almost all the space in the media.
“France is going to be very difficult to govern,” concludes political scientist Jérôme Fourquet in the Figaro Magazine. “We could have a second fixed five-year term, like that of Jacques Chirac between 2002 and 2007,” he said. Among the reasons for concern is the darkening economic outlook, although no one in this campaign has said a word about it. Not to mention that the president will not be able to stand for re-election in five years and that his succession will soon be on the agenda.