” The anarchy “, “madness”, “disorder”… Since the evening of the first round of the legislative elections, which dedicated the duel between Together! and the New People’s Ecological and Social Union (Nupes), the presidential majority is sparing no effort to mobilize voters and encourage them to defeat the candidates of the union of the left and their figurehead, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Always convinced that he can ” be elected “ Prime Minister, the leader of La France insoumise (LFI) also strives to dramatize the between-two-rounds. “Chaos is him!” », he replied once again, targeting Emmanuel Macron, in an interview with the ParisianTuesday, June 14.
The hypothesis – still improbable a few weeks ago – that the re-elected Head of State can only rely on a relative majority in the Assembly encourages these thundering expressions. For the first time since 2002 and the reform of the electoral calendar, the outcome of the legislative elections could seize up the mechanisms put in place over the Ve Republic to ensure an absolute majority for the President of the Republic.
From there to say that France would be ungovernable without 289 deputies supporting Mr. Macron? “The relative majority obliges us to endless negotiations, it’s a lot of waste of time”, argued the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, on France 2, Tuesday 14. For the supporters of the Head of State, the hypothesis is therefore equivalent to a “political and institutional crisis”. There have been two cases of relative majority in the past: under General de Gaulle (1958-1962), then under François Mitterrand with Michel Rocard Prime Minister (1988-1991). This did not paralyze, at the time, the action of the executive, according to Marie-Anne Cohendet, professor of constitutional law at the University of Paris-I.
On the contrary, it even made it possible, in the case of Michel Rocard, to rehabilitate the culture of compromise through enlarged majorities, despite the use of article 49.3 28 times. “The raison d’etre of a Parliament is to parley and one of the major vices of the Ve Republic is that we do not negotiate enough because we too often have a majority at attention in front of the Head of State “explains M.me Cohendet. In the 1958 Constitution, the president even without a majority has the right of dissolution, as does recourse to article 49.3, limited since the 2008 revision to one finance bill and another text per parliamentary session.
Room for maneuver
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