After the electoral turbulence of June and July, few in France imagined that we would be heading into September without a new prime minister appointed to reflect the results of last month’s parliamentary elections.
When Emmanuel Macron unexpectedly called snap elections in June, the prevailing wisdom was that the far right would win. Many of us even suspected that Macron favoured such an outcome so that Marine Le Pen would be tainted by her party’s exercise of power and therefore less likely to win the presidency in 2027. Whether that was his plan or not, calling the vote was a dangerous gamble that took an unexpected turn, putting an ad hoc leftwing coalition in first place with the largest number of votes, but without the numbers to build a working majority in parliament.
The French constitution entrusts the president with the authority to appoint the prime minister. Under the unwritten conventions of the Fifth Republic, the prime minister is chosen from the majority grouping in the national assembly.
The defeated prime minister, Gabriel Attal, resigned after the elections: voters had relegated the centrist administration he headed to second place. But the president refused to accept Attal’s resignation and retained the outgoing government in a caretaker role, claiming that stability required it. Since then, we have been governed by ministers who have in effect resigned, a situation that is completely unprecedented in France.
Many current members of parliament won their seats in July thanks to the “republican front”, a tactical voting strategy under which candidates opposed to Marine Le Pen’s party agreed to withdraw in three-way constituency races to keep the far right out of power. That strategy, adhered to mostly by the left, was of most benefit to Macron’s party – although it did not stop it, once safely elected, from ruling out working with the France Unbowed party (LFI), the major force on the left, for being too radical, “radioactive” and unable to govern.
True, it took the leftwing coalition, the New Popular Front (NFP), some time to agree on a prime ministerial candidate. Eventually, the group selected Lucie Castets, a 37-year-old civil servant, unknown to the general public but with a strong record on defending public services.
Macron reacted by giving an interview in which he brushed off the proposal from the left, adding that “nobody won” the election and that “it would be incorrect to say that the New Popular Front has any kind of majority”.
He then unilaterally announced an “Olympics truce”, implying that France should wait until after the Olympic Games (but strangely not the Paralympic Games) to form a government.
Macron finally started consultations with leaders of the main political groupings six weeks after the election results. Aware of its radical image, LFI even agreed to withdraw from a potential government in order not to be a liability to the coalition.
Yet when talks concluded, the president released a statement announcing that he was not appointing a prime minister from the left, claiming that without a majority in the national assembly, they would face a no-confidence vote. In the name of “institutional stability”, he suggested that the possibility of a centrist coalition should be explored instead.
This was a shocking and dangerous statement, breathtaking in its arrogance and disregard for our democratic processes. No wonder so many voices from the NFP condemned it as a “disgrace” and an “unacceptable power grab”. Even the former president François Hollande, now an NFP member of parliament, not known for being a radical, criticised it as an “institutional mistake”.
The president is not only supposed to be above party politics, but the separation of powers should not allow him to intervene in the formation of majorities. Earlier in the summer, Macron’s entourage revealed that the president was even refusing any substantial policy changes.
France turned out to vote in the unexpected elections (many resorted to proxies) in numbers not seen for decades. The outcome was explicit: voters rejected Macron, they voted for a change. Given the parliamentary arithmetic, none of the three main elected blocs can build a governing majority alone. But it is not up to the president to decide which of them is worthy of governing.
We are living in an unprecedented time, with an outgoing government still taking major decisions. Macron, who once sold himself to French voters as a political disruptor who would shake up the system that was failing them, acts now like a republican monarch using the pretext of “stability” to deny the very functioning of our democracy.
He should be a leader – instead, he is becoming an authoritarian president whose popularity continues to plummet. We cannot accept such behaviour in a democracy: the French electorate were clear when they expressed their opposition to his policies. Now he must start respecting them.
Rokhaya Diallo is a Guardian Europe columnist
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