François Hollande did not lose his verve, even questioned in English. The former President of the Republic delivered a colorful interview to the American channel CNN which asked him questions about the war in Ukraine but also about the current president re-elected last Sunday, Emmanuel Macron.
On his former Minister of Economy and Finance, who left his government to found his movement “En Marche” a year before the 2017 election, François Hollande does not only have tender words. When the CNN journalist asks him to deliver his “impression on the man, on the president, on the mission”, the former socialist president replies: “The Macron man was intelligent, he still is, and capable bold initiatives, but he had no previous experience. Five years later, he gained experience, but he failed to build a political force behind him. »
Rise of extremes
A first tackle that he will embellish with a serious concern vis-à-vis the political landscape of France. “This means that the situation is much more fragile than one might think given the results (of the presidential election). It can obviously have a majority in the National Assembly but with elements coming from the left and the right. He failed to impose his authority on a single party in particular, he notes.
“Behind a certain stability, there is a fragility, but the most serious for the French political situation, because the center-right, that of Charles de Gaulle and Jacques Chirac, and the left of François Mitterrand, Lionel Jospin and of myself have collapsed, it is that the extremist parties are the only alternatives to Macron”, adds the retired president adding that if Emmanuel Macron “was re-elected quite widely” with 58.6% of the votes cast, “it is confronted with these extremes, which runs the risk, unless the traditional parties are reformed, of seeing the extreme right or the extreme left come to power one day”.
François Hollande to rebuild the left?
Who to rebuild the traditional parties, at least on the left? François Hollande has clearly not hung up politics for good. If he is not going to “stand now for the next” election, he does not rule out trying to repair the broken pots of the Socialist Party: “The idea of rebuilding a center left around the socialist ideas of tomorrow, yes, it is certainly something that interests me, a lot”.
François Hollande expressed on Franceinfo Thursday his rejection of the agreement between the PS and rebellious France for the legislative elections, believing that this partnership would be “a questioning of the very history of socialism, of François Mitterrand and his European commitments, of Lionel Jospin and his economic credibility and his social advances”. “It is not a discussion that is in question, it is a disappearance. Discussing is necessary, disappearing is impossible,” he insisted.