Mélenchon-Darmanin: the circus rather than a real debate on the Fifth Republic

2023-05-02 19:25:38

Obviously, Jean-Luc Mélenchon was stung by the front page of L’Express on April 27 recounting his fall, with this glass ceiling which is reinforced above his head, preventing the left from being reborn with the victory, and presenting him with a serious competitor: François Ruffin. Him, retired? Never ! It took the sound and the fury of a few frenzied words to refocus the media attention on his person. “Down with the bad republic”, he chanted from the podium of this May 1st, workers’ day. And there, to his delight, his critics who throw themselves on the platform of indignation, scandalized by a few words which would advocate insurrection but which, in reality, say less than they want to show.

If we were naughty, we would assume that the front page of L’Express (“The fall of Mélenchon”) did not reassure Gérald Darmanin either. He, who has made his chair as Minister of the Interior a stepping stone for a potential candidacy for order, does he not precisely need the noise and the fury of the Insoumis whom he accuses of to call “virtually sedition”? “Where are the condemnations coming from the far left, from La France insoumise, from Jean-Luc Mélenchon […] ? Everything is good for demagoguery, to excite part of the population, he has a part of the responsibility”, also launched Darmanin in reference to the violence, some of which injured the police. And Mélenchon to retort: ​​”The maintenance of yesterday’s order once again turned into absurd general violence. Darmanin is 100% responsible. That’s why he wants to transfer his responsibility to others.”

Bursts

A ping-pong, another one, which does nothing but feed Elon Musk’s beast, as much as it satisfies the minister and the former presidential candidate. No offense to the Minister, Jean-Luc Mélenchon is not a seditious, but that we think so and that his opponents affirm it loud and clear is not to displease the latter. It will not be said that it is only about marketing. But his old friends assure him: under François Mitterrand, as with Lionel Jospin, there was no more obsequious Republican than Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

There is so much to say about the Fifth Republic, the autolatre wanderings of those who embody it, its workings no longer really in tune with the times… François Mitterrand had done it in The permanent coup (Plon, 1964). He denounced, no less violently than Mélenchon, the misuses of too personal power, of his police. But no doubt the rebellious leader did not have the time to devote so many pages to it. You had to hit hard and fast. The bursts are his business as much as those of his opponents. “Tell me by whom you are judged and I will tell you who you are. There is no surer axiom in politics”, wrote Mitterrand in this same book. The circus continues, too bad for the debate.