All opposition to Emmanuel Macron are now eyeing the legislative elections (June 12 and 19) to make it a “third round” which would mitigate, even annihilate, Emmanuel Macron’s victory by installing a majority hostile to his program at the Palais-Bourbon , or failing that, strong opposition. If it is understandable to want to remobilize the troops after a re-election which is “the fruit of the resignation” (Maxime Tandonnet) of the French, the hypothesis seems to relate more to the Coué method than to political realism.
We jumped when we saw Jean-Luc Mélenchon call the French, from the between-two-rounds, to “[l]’elect Prime Minister’, a veteran of the Fifth Republic like him cannot ignore that this slogan is constitutionally improper, and politically improbable. Other political leaders, without going as far as this institutional sprain, have taken up this word order of the “third round.” Going back to previous editions, we find the same slogan… for the same failure.
Just to believe
In 2017, Eric Coquerel (La France insoumise) was calling already in a legislative “third round”. Elected, he formed with his comrades a combative but minority and small group (17 seats in the Assembly).
Still in 2017, François Baroin, after the upheavals of the Fillon affair and the rout of the right (despite a score in the first round more than four times higher than that of Valérie Pécresse this year), dreamed aloud of revenge and to be a prime minister of cohabitation. “I am absolutely convinced that it will be shattered. We are the last pole of stability in a complete upheaval, ”he explained shortly before the second round on RTL. The victory of the right in the legislative elections and his arrival at Matignon would be the “third surprise of this crazy presidential election”, he explained then. Result: 112 LR seats in the Assembly, far, far from the 308 obtained by the Republic on the move.
Same refrain in 2012: the UMP, defeated by François Hollande, announced a “third round”, notably through the voice of Jean-Pierre Raffarin (JDD). For an equally clear confirmation of the choice of the presidential election: 331 seats for a presidential majority in the Assembly, 229 for the parliamentary right.
In 2007, Ségolène Royal may have played the defeat by singing and promising her supporters to lead them “to other victories”, Nicolas Sarkozy’s victory was far too clear – in particular in view of his first round score – for consider any kind of cohabitation: 345 votes for the parliamentary right, against 227 for the left.
At the end of a five-year cohabitation which the French no longer wanted, the question barely arose in 2002, Jacques Chirac obtaining the majority he was seeking, despite a historically low score in the first round: only 5, 66 million French people had chosen it (19.88% of the votes cast, with a strong abstention, 28.4%). We can consider as such that he was, paradoxically in view of his quasi-plebiscite in the second round, the “most poorly elected” president of the Fifth Republic. A label which Jean-Luc Mélenchon tried to deck out Emmanuel Macron “season 2”: the outgoing president saw 38% of those registered to re-elect him in the second round, the lowest score since the election of Georges Pompidou in 1969.
An institutional and political wall
The two seven years of François Mitterrand had ended with two years of cohabitation. After the dissolution of the National Assembly in 1997, Jacques Chirac inflicted on himself an unprecedented “quinquennium” of cohabitation until 2002. If some people put up with it, the majority rejection by the French of this political configuration which, in the spirit of the Fifth Republic, was not intended to be so long, had contributed to the adoption of the five-year term: an illusory solution, because if the inversion and the alignment of the electoral calendars reduced the risk of cohabitation, the The spirit of the institutions was upset, the executive no longer having any parliamentary counterweight, the most powerful chamber being elected in its wake and it having all its legitimacy.
See also: Emmanuel Macron toying with the idea of a seven-year term… “Free reflection” or real danger?
The two-round majority voting system accentuates this trend: in May 2017, 61% of those questioned did not want the newly elected Emmanuel Macron to have an absolute majority at the Palais-Bourbon (le Parisien). The rest is known…
The financing of political parties, for which the score in the legislative elections is decisive, only aggravates the problem: the small parties have every interest in competing under their colors to glean some sources of income and run the shop for five years.
Nothing, neither in the spirit nor in the functioning of our institutions, is favorable to a “third round” in the Assembly: from the outset, this rallying cry therefore seemed, to those who have a little political memory , wishful thinking. A fairy tale to maintain the morale of the troops, an imaginary consolation, a fable that bad losers tell each other.
And in fact, this perception is confirmed by the first polls: if the various organizations confess their perplexity in the face of a political landscape in accelerated recomposition and display circumstantial caution, for the moment, in all cases, as shown for example the Harris Interactive projection for Challenges magazine, the President of the Republic will have an absolute majority in the National Assembly.
Alliances and recomposition
On the left as on the right, it phosphorus: we try to bury the hatchet and to forge alliances. Around rebellious France, the agreements seem better engaged than at the opposite end of the political spectrum, where Eric Zemmour’s “outstretched hand” at the National Rally was deemed awkward – given the balance of power – and unwelcome: the recall that “the name Le Pen” was beaten “for the eighth time” during a presidential election was “unnecessarily hurtful”, and “it was neither the place nor the time” to make this “cruel observation”, regret with one voice a Zemmourist sympathizer and an RN activist. “The national union” to which the former journalist calls was logically received very coldly by the RN.
All the parties staked their lives, even their survival, in this election: more than a “Untraceable Chamber” of ultras from both sides communing in anti-macronism – or even from a single side, the fate of the old parties – and the youngest – will undoubtedly be the real issue of the legislative elections. We saw it with the dinosaurs of French political life – the Radical Party, the Communist Party, then the Socialist Party, and now it’s the turn of the Republicans: local roots make it possible to save the day, by keeping parliamentary mandates or in local executives despite starving scores at the national level. Even if one elects deputies “of the nation”, the electoral division gives a strong local dimension to these elections: a new episode of reprieve, of a national death deferred at the local level, for the old parties? The extent of their resistance or their stampede will be to follow: will the PS be swept away? Will the Republicans be finished off by the mass entry into Parliament of deputies from the National Rally, with or without the support of the new Reconquest party? Or will they limit the damage?
Despite the pincers of the institutions, steamroller for the post-presidential opposition, and of their own shopkeeper’s spirit, there is therefore a space for the legislative elections to redraw the balance of party forces for the next five years: remains to be whether they will act as a catalyst for that fixed by the first round of the presidential election, or as a shock absorber, the latter having been deformed by the pressure of the useful vote and a skimmed campaign.
A fourth lap in the street?
Probable formality for Macronie, no less probable recomposition to its right and to its left, and after?
The expression “third round” was traditionally linked to the street: the “social third round” is a classic – generally just as little follow-up, the presidential state of grace preventing it for a time.
The expression having been deported to the legislative elections, we can speak of a “fourth round” to come: a state of grace, this time, there will not be.
There are the figures, but there is also the state of mind, and the lack of enthusiasm with which President of the Republic was re-elected will weigh heavily. The various oppositions have already announced that they do not want to undergo a five-year term without a word. The painful reforms to come and the consequences of Emmanuel Macron’s choices – the bill for “whatever it takes” will arrive one way or another, that of our diplomatic positions as well – risk greatly shaking the body social, even to set fire to the powder. With or without the unions, becalmed in their health torpor and largely discredited, it’s a safe bet that the various protest movements will get back into battle order, without even necessarily waiting for the legislative elections.
In a survey, CNews showed yesterday in its morning that 83% of its viewers were dissatisfied of the re-election of Emmanuel Macron. Such consultation is not of great value, but it is only one indication among others of a widespread feeling of an election felt like a “rape above a cuckold’s nest” (André Bercoff).
The “beavers” (Laurent Bouvet) have already started to “block”… the result of their own “dam”. The 30 million registered voters who did not vote for Emmanuel Macron during this second round are probably under no illusions about a “third round” in the legislative elections: if he can still reserve surprises, expect from this ballot a revenge for the presidential election seems a chimera. But the game does not look easy for the re-elected president, who will also have to deal with the unprecedented impossibility of claiming his own succession: the oppositions will be multiple, determined, and will undoubtedly take unprecedented forms, failing to be able to translate into national representation. The people have more than one… trick up their sleeve.