TRIBUNE – The sea serpent of institutional reform is back. With this time a new element: the fanatics of America point the tip of their nose.
In his New Year’s address, it is first of all the President of the Republic who talks to us about establishing “something akin to midterm elections, like in the United States”. In an interview at Figaroon January 13, it was then the Secretary General of Renaissance, the former Republic on the move, who announced – in addition to the introduction of proportional representation in legislative elections (as if the current experiment of a National Assembly without absolute majority was not conclusive!) – “the major project of the reform of the Constitutional Council, which should perhaps be transformed into a real French Supreme Court”.
It’s been that way for decades. When a political power is in difficulty, in delicacy with the French people – it is enough to read the level of confidence granted to the president as to the host of Matignon in the polls -, it opens the institutional site and plays the sorcerer’s apprentice. Of course, for the right reason: to give the floor to the people more often. Who can be against this idea? Isn’t that why the five-year term was introduced? With the results that we know, and the relative majority from the legislative ballot boxes in the spring of 2022.
But there is no need to change the institutions to give voice to the sovereign people. The 1958 Constitution organizes recourse to the people, and even recourse to arbitration by the French people, in at least two ways: the dissolution of the National Assembly followed by new legislative elections, and the referendum conceived as a question of confidence posed by the President of the Republic, who engages his responsibility before the people who elected him, with the consequence that follows: his retention in power if the French men and women answer “yes”, his resignation if the answer is ” no”. There is a third remedy in the country, which Mr. Macron cannot use, no longer being re-eligible: his resignation, followed by a candidacy for the presidential election.
At a time when Mr. Macron and the secretary general of his party obviously draw their inspiration from the American presidential system, how can we not remind them of certain words of the founders of the Fifth Republic?
“The inability of some men to face the real problems”
On January 7, 1986, Michel Debré was questioned by The Daily of Parisnewspaper of Philippe Tesson, on the assumption of a five-year presidential mandate – we are there now – “going hand in hand with the establishment of a real presidential regime”.
Michel Debré’s response is very firm. “It’s nonsense, he says. The use of institutional discussions is intended to conceal the inability of certain politicians to deal with our real problems, which are demographic and economic. The conscious politician of its responsibilities must today face up to the real problems and not fabricate false ones”.
We are not in 1986, of course. But, in 2023, the problems are no longer just demographic and economic. On all sides, the time for additions has arrived. By dint of no longer governing the country, France is sinking dangerously. As interest rates rise, the first state budget is about to become the burden of the debt, which now exceeds 50 billion euros, to only deal with interest alone. The State budget for 2023 was voted with 500 billion in expenditure for 345 billion in revenue. And the Minister of Economy and Finance dares to talk to us in the most serious way about rigorous management.
The health system, one of the best in the world in 1986, is now in agony. Immigration is not controlled. State authority is challenged, flouted. Insecurity is everywhere. Justice makes decisions that are no longer executed. The school no longer transmits fundamental knowledge, and France slips from year to year in the international rankings. Talking about our energy supplies amounts to making a damning statement. We have achieved the feat of giving up the competitive advantage that our nuclear power plant gave us. And, not content with that, our rulers submit without reacting to the European and German diktat which earns us a price of electricity which jeopardizes our businesses and severely cuts off the purchasing power of our fellow citizens, seriously attacked by the return of electricity. inflation, particularly in the food sector.
And it was at a time when France was on the verge of a nervous breakdown that the government began its pension reform. Even if we are not “at mid-term”, article 11 of the Constitution, in its wording following the constitutional revision of Jacques Chirac (never implemented to date!) allows the organization of a referendum on this topic. But with Mr. Macron, as with his predecessors, it is still: “The referendum, always talk about it; organize it, never”.
The national sport enhances this sad picture a little. The French people, however, did not elect a coach for the French football team, but a President of the Republic…
“The Supreme Court is the people”
With regard to the Supreme Court, an old debate if ever there was one, we often quote – and rightly so – the declaration of General de Gaulle, in a press conference, on October 1, 1948: “I believe that in France, replied the General to a journalist, the best Supreme Court is the people and that, when there is a divergence or impossibility of granting the executive power and the legislative power, or when the legislative power does not manage to reach a majority – which is very often the case with us for many reasons and in particular reasons of temperament – the best arbiter is then the people.We must resolve to ask the people to decide. This is how democracy really works.”.
By making the French people the source of power and the recourse of the President of the Republic, De Gaulle not only put an end to the omnipotence of the parties under the Fourth Republic, but he endowed France with a regime which was specific to it, and which in no way intended to reproduce the American presidential system and its Supreme Court.
“The inability of some politicians to face our real problems”, said Michel Debre. “Resolve to ask the people to decide”, declared General de Gaulle. The founders of the Fifth Republic had set the bar high. Obviously too high for politicians who occupy the national palaces, but do not really govern the country, at a time when it would have the greatest need.
If it is true that“at no time, and in no field, what the infirmity of the head has in itself of irremediable can not be compensated by the value of the institution”, as De Gaulle wrote, this is not a sufficient reason to call into question the institutions which have amply demonstrated their solidity and their effectiveness for nearly 65 years, and which are in no way at the origin of the errors and faults of our rulers. And we cannot forget that these institutions were adopted by the French people, by referendum. If the power intends to follow through with its intentions, it is therefore the French people, and not the deputies and senators meeting in Congress at Versailles, who must be called upon to approve or reject the institutional changes envisaged at the start of this year. .
Returning to the spirit of the Fifth Republic and to a Gaullist practice of institutions, yes. Amend the Constitution to change the political regime, no.