The last time that Macronie had mentioned “the camp of reason”, by the voice of Minister Clément Beaune in an interview with World in August 2021, she had bitten her fingers and had sworn not to do it again. Now, with the presentation of the pension reform, we think we hear the same little music. We don’t redo each other. “The truth is not an opinion like the others”, likes to say the secretary general of the Elysée Alexis Kohler.
Elisabeth Borne therefore presents herself as the embodiment of this reason. During her press conference on January 10, the Prime Minister insists: the need to balance the regimes does not correspond to “a posture” but to “an observation”. In case the message isn’t clear, she adds, “It’s a fact, not a political argument.” One of her relatives explains: “She has no doubt that the pay-as-you-go system will not hold if we do nothing, those who say the opposite are not telling the truth, and she has this ‘to do point’ side. She is very rational, she thinks that if we can’t manage to carry out a reform like this, documented, it’s because we have a problem of collective solidarity.”
The head of government readily emphasizes that “the primary responsibility of the Pensions Orientation Council is to objectify things” – in fact, the famous COR was created for this purpose by Lionel Jospin in 2000. Is it because do we make this authority say one thing and its opposite, or that it itself says one thing and its opposite? Either way, it failed. Its projections suffer from the proliferation of hypotheses and other scenarios they incorporate, its past mistakes undermine its credibility. In 2017, the COR sins of optimism, which allows Emmanuel Macron to affirm that a parametric reform is not necessary and that he can therefore carry out his systemic reform without worrying about the question of the accounts. The COR will then have to revise its forecasts downwards. The result is an absolute impossibility to have a shared diagnosis. As a result, the government has failed in its first mission: to convince of the need for reform.
Uncontrolled skidding
Opposite, before the mobilization day of January 19, a completely different discourse is set up, intended to corner a government “in a cultural minority”. During the first meeting launching the protest, François Ruffin set the tone: “The subject is no longer of the order of reason. We must touch hearts. And hearts are joy. It must be said that the Retirement is not hardship but a prospect of happiness, a new age of life. You have to touch the guts of the French, touch their pride.” A minister salutes the performance, stressing how the deputy of the Somme is “clever”: “He knows how to speak starting from the tilers, the forklift drivers, the liberal nurses. We must manage to open up from a purely technical point of view.”
All the lefts embraced. The new national secretary of EELV, Marine Tondelier, for whom we are right if we are sincere – vast program -, is inspired by the Brazilian Paulo Freire to highlight “the pedagogy of the oppressed”: “The pedagogue can learn by listening and talking about where the oppressed person is.” And the Socialists follow, Olivier Faure taking care to note: “The French don’t care what we do in Germany or Italy.” The PS thus rallies to the position of LFI (retirement at age 60), which is the opposite of what it advocated yesterday (in the 2022 elections) and the opposite of what it carried out before yesterday, when he was in charge. Responsibilities? Watch out for big words…
Curious time. While, icing on the cake, “the Medef has become the CGT of employers” (according to the formula of a so-called government socialist), France begins an uncontrolled skid. If there is one point that unites government and unions, majority and opposition, it is this: no one knows how the climate will evolve. “Do we have a classic strike movement or does it take Saturday and Sunday in other forms?” Asks a Matignon adviser. You have to imagine Descartes French.