Time.news – Political life sometimes reserves surprises, and big surprises. Clearly, no one could have foreseen that the spring 2022 elections would lead to a situation so elusive that the government does not know today whether to try to govern for all its worth, or to provoke new elections by dissolution of the National Assembly.
Here and there, we can hear, or we can read, that the 1958 Constitution was designed to allow a government of the country without an absolute majority in the National Assembly. It is first of all to ignore the incomparable contribution of the majority vote for the formation of a coherent and stable majority. Six decades of the Fifth Republic have provided a dazzling demonstration of this. It is then to forget that, since the constitutional revision of 2008, the power no longer has, as it pleases, the weapon of the 49-3 repeatedly, proof, if necessary, that one should not touch to a Constitution than with a trembling hand.
Whatever the future of this Assembly resulting from the June 2022 polls, a lesson can now be drawn from this political situation with regard to the voting method used for the election of deputies.
Majority voting has been, since 1958, consubstantial with the Fifth Republic. Proportional representation is attached to the Fourth Republic and to the ministerial instability which was its main mark.
Only once has proportional representation been used during the 64 years of the Fifth Republic. It was in 1986. To avoid an electoral rout, François Mitterrand had voted the return to the ballot of the Fourth Republic by the Socialist deputies at the end of their mandate. Despite proportional representation, his opponents had obtained an absolute majority, which clearly showed the massive rejection of socialist power at the time. A first cohabitation followed, with Jacques Chirac at the Hotel Matignon.
By a curious paradox, in this spring of 2022, there was no need for the proportional voting system for the National Assembly to find itself without an absolute majority. It was by majority vote that this Assembly was renewed. And it is indeed because there is no real majority at the Palais Bourbon that we are currently witnessing attempts – so far unsuccessful – to form a majority government by associating opponents of the standby.
With the majority system, coalitions are formed before the elections, on the basis of an agreement on the main orientations of a policy. It is with complete clarity that the electorate decides. With proportional representation, political combinations take place after the election, they can last for months, as we saw in Germany or Italy a few years ago. The voter’s choice then becomes subordinate. These are negotiations between the parties that lead to the formation of a majority.
For supporters of majority voting and the Fifth Republic, the current experience is of the greatest interest. The French women and men have indeed, before their eyes, a political life characterized by an Assembly of the proportional ballot type, without an absolute majority. Everyone can measure the limits of the exercise, and it is not surprising that the idea of a dissolution, followed by a return to the voters, comes up so frequently in the debates.
On the other hand, for the proponents of proportional representation in small doses, medium doses, or high doses – and there are many of them, and they are strangely silent! – the current situation is fraught with consequences. It will be difficult for them to explain to the French people that we can sustainably and validly govern France with a National Assembly without a real majority. However, it is the nature of the proportional ballot not to allow the formation of a majority of support for the President of the Republic and his government.
The facts are there, and they are all arguments that are difficult to contest. On various occasions, the President of the Republic himself has made himself the champion of a voting system “at the same time” majority and proportional. In the event of a dissolution of the National Assembly, undoubtedly inevitable, and in the atmosphere of the moment, instructed by the experience in progress – undoubtedly “hygienic” would have said Raymond Barre, it is the word that he used about cohabitation – it seems unlikely that Emmanuel Macron will vote for a change in the electoral law before sending the deputies back to their voters. It is the condemnation, in good and due form, of proportional representation.