Macron in search of an unlikely ‘Olympic truce’

3 months ago 18

French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Tuesday (23 July) that the outgoing government would remain in place ”until at least mid-August” and that no new prime minister would be appointed before the end of the Olympic Games, a move the left-wing opposition denounced as a ”denial of democracy”.

Macron intends to control the timetable, following the turmoil that ensued after he dissolved parliament and called a snap election on 9 June.

In a televised address broadcast on Tuesday, the French president reaffirmed his intention to wait until the end of the Summer Olympics, which are being held in Paris from 26 July to 11 August, before appointing a new prime minister.

”I have chosen stability”, he said. ”It’s clear that, until mid-August, we’re not in a position to change things because we’d create disorder”.

In his first interview since the second round of legislative elections on 7 July, Macron acknowledged the defeat of the outgoing presidential majority, while emphasising that no party or coalition currently had a sufficient majority to form a government.

Reactions were not long in coming from the leaders of the Left, united within the Nouveau Front populaire (NFP), which came out on top in the election. They condemned the president’s ”authoritarian drift” and his ”policy of the worst”, and called on him to ”respect the vote of the French people”.

The Left reaches agreement

After almost three weeks of fruitless negotiations, La France Insoumise (LFI), the Communist Party (PC), the Greens, and the Socialist Party (PS) agreed an hour before the president spoke to propose the largely unknown Lucie Castets for the post of prime minister.

The 37-year-old Castets is a senior civil servant specialising in ”the repression of tax fraud and financial crime”, according to an NFP press release. She is also the director of finance and procurement in the administration of the City of Paris, headed by the Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo.

Interviewed on France Inter on 24 July, Castets said she wanted to ”look for coalitions” but without allying herself with the presidential camp, which is accused of cutting public services and lowering taxes for the wealthiest.

”We’ll be building agreements [in the National Assembly] on subject after subject”, she added.

For the time being, however, Macron does not seem to have abandoned his dream of a grand coalition of the parties that took part in the ”republican front” against the far-right Rassemblement national (RN) in the second round of the legislative elections, from the left to the moderate right, with the presidential coalition at its core.

A first step seems to have already been taken with the recent presentation by Laurent Wauquiez, chairman of the Republican Right group in the National Assembly (DR, formerly Les Républicains) of an ”emergency legislative pact” detailing the laws the party could support without formally participating in a government led by Macron’s coalition.

The Republican Right has 47 of the 577 deputies in the National Assembly, while Macron’s troops have 168, so they are still unable to achieve an absolute majority of 289 seats.

To break the political deadlock, Macron will have to continue his offensive to dismantle the NFP and push some of its members to break away from the hastily arranged leftist alliance.

There is little chance, however, that his calls will appeal to the left, especially now that they agreed on their candidate for prime minister. So it is in the midst of a serious political crisis that the Paris Olympic Games open on Friday (26 July).

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]