“The hypertrophy of the presidential function, reinforced by the yardstick of Macron’s verticality, leads to asphyxiation”

2023-05-16 05:30:07

“He’s running, he’s running, the ferret, he’s been here, he’ll come back here…” Eager to forget the sequence of retirements, Emmanuel Macon – who had retired – is omnipresent (four media in six days!), crisscrossing the country to try to repair his link with the French, and multiplying announcements to show that the country is not blocked. In doing so, the President of the Republic takes everything in his path.

Already transparent, his ministers are being stripped of their files and related communications: increase in teacher salaries, delegation of medical acts, not to mention the water plan, which Elisabeth Borne had planned to unveil.

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“Is it at the level of a President of the Republic? », we were already wondering in the majority when, on December 8, 2022, the latter announced free condoms for 18-25 year olds. The person concerned assumes. In the river talk to L’Opinion posted sunday may 14th, it multiplies the use of “is”quoting Elisabeth Borne lip service. “I should have wet myself more”he even regretted, on April 23.

Mr. Macron knows that he has found, alone, the parade of “yellow vests”, with the big debate. He has not forgotten either the health crisis and his televised high masses – watched by millions of confined French people – at the end of which his decisions were immediately followed by effects. His speech is performative, he seems to think.

The balance of institutions

In the short term, this overexposure could pay off, affecting its popularity rating. But this mode of governance, practiced in its time by Nicolas Sarkozy, has a cost that seems increasingly high, while the country – under pressure from extremes and radicalism, which devours public debate – would so much need to a regulatory authority, essential to the balance of the institutions.

By choosing the power (power) rather than theauthority (authority) – according to the distinction established by Roman law – the president becomes an agent of government policy like any other. And by becoming the minister of everything, he de facto renounces his magisterium, his moral authority. “The hypertrophy of the presidential function actually lowers it”laments the former minister of Jacques Chirac Jean-Jacques Aillagon.

For six years, this Chiraquian, passed by the MoDem, observes, amazed, the solitary practice of the power of this young president whom he nevertheless supported with enthusiasm in 2017. The pension reform, imposed on the unions, on Parliament (by the bias of 49.3 in particular) and the overwhelming majority of French people, would be, according to him, emblematic of this disruption of institutions. The lawyers of the monarchy had invented the adage “what pleases the prince has the force of law”, he recalls. A principle abolished with the French Revolution and the affirmation of the sovereignty of the people, which came to replace that of the monarch. “However, we almost have the impression here that the legal precepts of the Old Regime have been restored”continues Mr. Aillagon, according to whom “we cannot brace ourselves indefinitely against the expression of the popular will”.

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