2024-07-09 03:24:36
President Macron is not to be envied, although there is credit for the post-election chaos
Political hell! That’s what analysts called the situation the country faced in the second round of the French elections. Therefore, immediately after the announcement of the results, one main word was heard: caution. She left the Elysee Palace, where President Emmanuel Macron announced that he would only make a statement after the official announcement of the final results.
According to the latest data, the “New People’s Front” (the United Left) won 32.6%, which equates to 188 seats. Macron’s centrist bloc “Together” has 27.9%, giving it 161 seats. “National Assembly” remained in third place with 24.6%, or 142 seats in the parliament for the extreme right. The center-right Republicans won 8.3%, or 48 deputies.
Thanks to the unprecedented unification of the left in the form of the “New Popular Front” and the tactics of rejecting candidates applied by both him and Macron’s centrists, the main goal was achieved – the path of the extreme right of Marine Le Pen and her protégé Jordan Bardella to the absolute majority, and from there to power, was blocked. But with this, the situation not only did not become simpler, but became even more complicated. The fact that none of the three strong groups in the parliament – neither the surprise big winners of the United Left (led by the far-right France Insubordinate party), nor Macron’s men, nor the nationalists of National Unity, have an absolute majority of more than 289 MPs, caused all the analysts in chorus to ask the question: Where to now? Is France becoming ungovernable?
President Macron is not to be envied. In fact, he has contributed quite significantly to the conundrum he now finds himself facing. First, because of his leadership for years
unpopular policy of reforms,
which alienated citizens from liberals and turned them towards extreme forces on the political spectrum, as well as the extremely risky move of calling early elections just three weeks after his party’s collapse in the European vote. And now he will have to be the first to scratch the surface of the coming political chaos. One of his first actions was to propose to the current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal to remain in office “for the time being” in order to “ensure the stability of the country”.
Now on the table, according to French political scientists, there are 4 main scenarios:
1. Minority Government
It could field ministers, but it would be subject to incessant votes of no confidence and portends great uncertainty. This is the reason why it is believed that such a cabinet will not be put on the table.
2. Coalitions
With the current distribution of forces, they seem very difficult to implement, if not impossible. After the results, far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced the end of Macronism, indicated that the victorious New Popular Front was ready to govern, but made it clear that it had no desire to form a coalition. The leader of the Socialists, Olivier Faure, is in the same position. On the other hand, President Macron also does not want to govern with the extreme left. “So it is right to ask: Since no one wants coalitions, how will they be implemented? Both Mélenchon and Faure announced that they had no intention of deviating from the program of the New Popular Front. Is such a solution possible then?” asks political scientist Francois Debra. Another essential question is posed here: Will the left remain united, or will it disintegrate into its constituent parties? And will Jean-Luc Mélenchon be able to establish himself as a leading figure capable of governing?
3. Majorities by projects
This possibility was allowed by the previous Prime Minister Gabriel Atal. If it is not possible to form permanent coalitions, then to form majorities between the different political forces text by text. I.e. on one text, the left to unite with the centrists, on the other, for Macron’s people to find a common language with the traditional right or even with the extreme. But then the question arises how and
who will impose and determines daily order
of the proposed texts. There will be a constant contest over which political force will be able to impose its issues and generate debate on them.
4. Technical government
It is a question of assembling a cabinet of people with no political affiliation, who at first manage to organize at least the debate around the budget. This will be one of the first problems that the new French National Assembly will have to deal with, and there is already great tension around it because of the fundamentally different positions of Macron’s “Together” coalition and those of the extreme left. How in such a situation it will be possible to assemble such a government also seems problematic.
In the context of all these difficulties, Marine Le Pen’s formation seems to have a strategy: to use every opportunity to demonstrate that the left and the centrists cannot unite and will continue to preoccupy the French with issues that do not interest them. It is not by chance that Jordan Bardella, in his speech after the end of the elections, returned to the subject of immigration and insecurity. It is likely that the far right in the coming weeks and months will do its best to show that it is only it
the power which may take out the country from the crisis
with an eye already fixed on the presidential elections in 3 years. In the end, the loss of the “National Assembly” remains too conditional, or as Marine Le Pen put it – her victory seems only postponed. And its great success is that it significantly increases its MPs and is now a force that everyone must reckon with.
In the end, after the elections, instead of the “clarification” requested by the president, France faced a dead end with a divided and chaotic National Assembly, in which quarrels will be everyday and a slow legislative process against the background of a fragmented society. Some French elected representatives have already called: “We must behave like adults. The National Assembly should be the center of power”. If and when will it happen?
Western publications add that according to the constitution in France, one year after these elections, there cannot be another early vote.