why the temptation of some deputies deeply divides the majority

Should we reconnect with the accumulation of mandates? French politics are not doing well and parliamentarians are not doing any better. With record abstention, their legitimacy weakens, voters consider them too distant, and they themselves feel disconnected from the realities on the ground. These are the reasons put forward by a deputy of the majority, Karl Olive, on the initiative of a bill to reconsider the total ban on the accumulation of the mandates of parliamentarian and mayor.

Remember that a parliamentarian can still be a municipal, departmental or regional councilor at the same time. But Karl Olive also wants to restore the possibility of combining a mandate of deputy or senator with that of mayor, only for cities with less than 20,000 inhabitants. Which still concerns 98% of the 36,000 municipalities in France. On the other hand, he intends to maintain the prohibition on accumulating allowances.

For this proposal, Karl Olive prides himself on having the ear of President Emmanuel Macron. It is also in Poissy, the city of which he was mayor until June when he was elected deputy, that the candidate Macron had launched his presidential campaign. And the head of state is not a strong supporter of non-accumulation. Over the first five years, the executive suffered from the lack of presence of the deputies of the majority. And therefore a lack of sensors when anger rises in the country. We saw it with the crisis of “yellow vests”. And it was with the mayors that Emmanuel Macron had taken a bath of political youth to regain control during the “great debate” and save his mandate. But paradoxically, the supporters of the cumulation are recruited mainly from the side of LR, which has a large network of local elected officials, and the RN which aspires to establish itself in the country.

Still, the subject divides the majority so deeply. Karl Olive’s bill was thus not retained on Monday, September 19 by the office of the group of Renaissance deputies. The Macronist party has just decided to create a working group on institutions. It must be said that Emmanuel Macron argued ardently for the renewal of political personnel and the shelving of professional politicians. He had even launched to his troops: “Be proud to be amateurs!“It is difficult to say today that the cumulards would be the future of politics. Such an observation would rather sound like an admission of failure, and like the return of this “old world” which he claimed to bury.