“If the Fifth Republic has long claimed to be a bulwark against the rise to power of the far right, it is today the most assured path”

2023-04-24 19:30:13

RNothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. And this idea today is the need for a change of regime in France. It is that of building, through a constituent process, a new Republic, a fully parliamentary, fully representative Republic, a Republic which will finally bring France into modern democratic times.

Because the V^e Republic is dead. She died on Thursday March 16, 2023, at 4:30 p.m., when Emmanuel Macron made the decision to pervert his whole mind to use his letter against the country. She was finally buried on April 14, 2023, when the Constitutional Council put the final shovel to his cold corpse by declaring that yes, under our Constitution, he had the right to do so, and that whoever arrived after him would therefore be empowered to do the same.

She died because, whereas sixty-two years ago, during the putsch of the generals, she had imposed herself with the promise of protecting the general interest against chaos, she is today producing chaos against the general interest. She died when, all that still held her painfully upright, the promise of stability, the argument of efficiency, keeping away from the extreme right, all went up in smoke and, on the ashes of these myths, nothing else can be born but disorder and social violence.

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It died because, having lost all credibility in terms of its ability to democratically produce fair laws, it no longer embodies, for citizens, anything but the right offered to a minority power, alone against all, including against his own Parliament, to go against the country.

The contempt and disdain of an isolated power

For decades, the countless malfunctions that the V^e Republic produced – the verticality of power, the absurd centralism, the political culture of binary confrontation, the collective stupidity of artificial absolute majorities, the absence of dialogue elevated to the rank of virtue, contempt for social partners, the cult of chief, bringing Parliament to heel – all of this weakened confidence in politics, in parties, in institutions. But the constitutional origin of our failing political culture struggled to fully emerge.

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Those who for so long have campaigned for the advent of a VI^e Republic, drew up the contours of what would be a peaceful, truly parliamentary and representative democracy, respectful of the diversity of France and equipped with effective counter-powers, know this well. But, today, the French women and men have received the full force of the violence of the V^e.

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