2023-11-25 13:30:18
TRIBUNE – The (legitimate) President of the Republic summons (legitimately) the party leaders to a meeting. And some don’t go! So what about legitimacy?
To reflect on this notion of legitimacy, let’s go back to the source: the elections. In this regard, the presidential elections of 2017 and 2022 will perhaps, in terms of “legitimacy”, be presented by historians of the future as “scandals” among the biggest in recent French political history.
For what ?
In 2017 and in 2022 (since Maastricht, in fact), the challenge of the presidential election is always the same: to have a head of state who does not call into question the freedom given to financiers and large industrialists to do what they want, in their interest. And who does not take it into his head to give back to citizens the full use of their ballot, stripped of the essentials by the operation of Title XV of the Constitution.
It is in this context that Emmanuel Macron was found by people from these networks. Which must, necessarily, have been found (as is always done before recruiting someone) in the psychology of this person, in their private life, and in their trajectory (jumping from position to position, in the public and the private sector) , elements allowing them to think that they can count on him.
Problem: if Emmanuel Macron liked them, he did not like enough French people. No more than 20 or 25% of voters by the looks of it.
So, they made sure to reproduce, this time artificially, with the use of the heaviest manipulation techniques, the situation of 2002: ensuring that Marine Le Pen was present in the second round of the presidential election. And, between the two rounds, to die, in order to provoke an anti-Le Pen vote.
Which meant that Emmanuel Macron’s name came out of the polls.
Which probably also explains why Emmanuel Macron and his team do not fail to claim legitimacy due to the election at all times. Which is a rather daring syllogism (which obscures the part of manipulation – therefore, the vice of consent – in the result) (1). As is daring, the syllogism tending to make people believe that this elected official thinks personally or what he manages to decide – through the mechanical exploitation of the prerogatives attached to the position – is necessarily legitimate.
As for jurists, they will perhaps produce (at least those who do not simply paraphrase the texts) the following observation.
The 1965 reform which established the election of the President of the Republic by direct universal suffrage, aimed to give, thanks to a broad popular base, to the successors of General de Gaulle, the authority that the latter would not derive, like him, of their person. Authority to impose “rationalized” and decent functioning on the parliamentary system.
And now the mechanism is used to provide authority, not against the assembly (and the party regime), but in reality against the people. Since the “work” of the President of the Republic (like that of parliamentarians) – as prescribed by Title XV of the Constitution – is to execute the instructions arising from various treaties (organizing the freedom of action of the holders of economic power and financial as recalled above) and decisions taken outside France.
Historians may have to lengthen their developments for the 2025 presidential elections if, for example, Marine Le Pen still volunteers to play the same role. Unless, by then, events occur during which citizens will have decided that they will not be taken, once again, for fools (1).
1) When the election of a local elected official took place after an unfair maneuver (such as the distribution of a false leaflet the night before the vote), the election judge cancels it. Once the manipulation techniques are known and listed, the possibility exists that the election of a person to the presidency of the Republic will be similarly canceled for the same reason. Here again, when the citizens have pulled themselves together…
2) We remember, in fact, that during the presidential elections of 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen came in second position in the first round. Which apparently had neither been planned nor organized by anyone. And Jacques Chirac (who received less than 20% of the votes in the first round) moved to the Elysée after benefiting from the anti-Le Pen vote.
Marcel-M. Monin is an honorary university lecturer.
#Thoughts #legitimacy #FranceEvening