In the spring of 1962, the Head of State, Charles de Gaulle, was convinced of this: “As soon as peace [en Algérie] will be concluded, they will try to kill me. So I will attack. » Ce « ils » scathing designates the leaders of all stripes who, willy-nilly, called him to the rescue in May 1958 when the Republic threatened to collapse. The Algerian ordeal now overcome, the same people intend, in one way or another, to close the Gaullist parenthesis. From the end of April, the revolt got organized: only 259 deputies, against 247, placed their trust in Georges Pompidou, the prime minister appointed by de Gaulle to replace Michel Debré.
But the presidential presentiment takes a dramatic turn on August 22: at the Petit-Clamart crossroads, near Paris, the black DS which brings the president and his wife back to Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises is taken under fire from a dozen of shooters from the Secret Army Organization (OAS), the desperadoes of French Algeria. Miraculously, the General emerges unscathed from the attack.
This time, for him, the time has come to “unravel”. On September 20, during a radio and television address, he launched the offensive: “The keystone of our regime is the institution of a President of the Republic appointed by the reason and the feeling of the French. For him to be able to carry such a burden, he needs the explicit confidence of the nation. I therefore believe I have to make the following proposal to the country: when my own mandate is over, the President of the Republic will henceforth be elected by universal suffrage. » How should the people approve or reject this decisive reform? “I answer: by the most democratic, the way of the referendum. »
Double transgression
The transgression is twofold. Basically, first. Four years earlier, he had deemed such an initiative premature. In order not to frighten the traditional parties, the 1958 Constitution provided for the election of the president by a college of some 80,000 elected members – parliamentarians, general councilors and representatives of municipal councils. This is how, as the last Chairman of the Council of the IVe Republic, de Gaulle had become, in December 1958, the first president of the Ve. By giving all French people the power to elect the Head of State, he intends to consecrate his political legitimacy – henceforth unequaled – and to perpetuate his institutional pre-eminence.
On the method then. According to Article 89 of the Basic Law, a revision of the Constitution requires the prior agreement of the Assembly and the Senate. However, the Gaullists are not in the majority in either one or the other. De Gaulle therefore decides to circumvent the Parliament by using article 11. This stipulates that any bill relating to the organization of public powers can be submitted to referendum, which, he assures, “obviously encompasses the mode of election of the president”. It’s playing on words and putting a little more fire in the powder.
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