“Jupiterian” French President Emmanuel Macron has written to the French people, reflecting on the failure of the recent snap election to produce a new government, but conveniently forgetting to mention his role in that outcome.
There will be no new Prime Minister or government appointed for some time, President Macron said in a nationally published letter to the people in which he talked up his role as “protector of the higher interests of the Nation”.
Macron congratulated the French people on having rejected the “extreme right” at the ballot box, despite the actual opposite of that having happened. The “extreme right” to which Macron refers — Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), which actually has pretty left-wing economic views, but is in favour of border control — came first place in both rounds of the election in votes cast, rather making a mockery of the President’s claim.
In a result which has inevitably seen questions raised about the suitability of the 1958-vintage French election system for modern voting preferences, RN came first in votes but came third in seats. Macron’s group, meanwhile, came third in votes but second in seats.
Having failed in his gambit to strengthen his own group in the French Parliament and now faced with a left wing bloc as the largest group he warned just weeks ago would lead to “civil war” if they got near power, Macron appears to be playing for time to find a way out. Meanwhile, the hard-left leader Mélenchon accuses Macron of trying to subvert democracy — a brave take for a man in his position.
Stating the obvious but skirting around his role in apparently having called the election in a tantrum after his party received a drubbing at last month’s European Union elections, Macron told the nation: “no one won. No political force obtains a sufficient majority on its own and the blocs or coalitions that emerge from these elections are all minorities… As President of the Republic, I am both the protector of the higher interests of the Nation and the guarantor of the institutions and of respect for your choice… Last Sunday, you called for the invention of a new French political culture. For you, I will ensure this. In your name, I will be its guarantor.”
In all, President Macron said, he would not be appointing a new Prime Minister until the new political forces had “some time”. The old government would remain on in the meanwhile, he said.
Macron’s pretty words aside, research published on Wednesday suggests the French people themselves see through the claims and are not satisfied with the state of affairs. French broadcaster BFMTV reports their new polling which states a clear majority of French at 65 per cent think Macron calling early elections was a bad idea, and even more, around 70 per cent, say they aren’t happy with the indecisive results of the election itself.
As for the political stitch-ups contracted in the second round of the election to keep Le Pen’s RN out at all costs — leading to the strange situation where her party has most votes but few seats — over half of French are said to call this situation to be scheming and “unnatural”.
The radical leader of the left wing bloc that did come first in seats Jean-Luc Mélenchon was even more forthright on Wednesday night, outright rejecting Macron’s letter to the people, calling it a denial of democracy. “The president refuses to recognize the result of the polls”, he said, accusing Macron of attempting to wield a “royal veto” over the voters by refusing to accept the fact the left wing coalition got the most seats.
Mélenchon compared Macron’s “intrigues” to the dying days of the last French Republic and demanded President Macron “bow down and call the New Popular Front. This is simply democracy.” On the other hand, President of the French Senate Gérard Larcher takes the opposite view, reminding the public of the left’s very low vote share, despite their strong turnout of new members of Parliament.
Speaking on French television on Thursday morning, Larcher said if President Macron does invite the left-wing bloc New Popular Front to form a government,: “I will fight this choice and I will ask that the government be censured. I will call on my friends to censure this government, because it does not correspond to the deep will of the French people”.
This is a rapidly developing story and more may follow.
