There will always be time, on July 8, to open the trial of Emmanuel Macron. Considering that this monarch president played the fate of French democracy on a roll of the dice. That he has, by accelerating the timetable, opened the doors of power to the far right. Or on the contrary, we will be grateful to him, by pronouncing the dissolution, for having asked the people to decide. And precipitated an inevitable and essential political clarification. But this debate should not clutter our minds, a few days before a historic vote. Because on June 30, a month before the opening of the Olympic Games, barely a month after the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings – which allowed the annihilation of Nazi Germany, the French are returning to vote.
With three choices. The one in favor of a hoaxer, Jordan Bardella, TikTok spokesperson of an illiberal right synonymous with the regression of freedoms and rights. Whoever, in the name of blocking the far right, would lead a leader of the New Popular Front to Matignon: Jean-Luc Mélenchon, our national Hugo Chavez, would see himself well there.
Macronism has lived
And faced with this double populism, the French are offered a third option, dictated by the spirit of responsibility: that of a vote at the center. Certainly, the right, betrayed by Ciotti and his henchmen who left for a plate of lentils on the RN side, is still standing, but in what state! This is the reality of the political landscape: an alternation between the extremes, or this famous elusive center. Of the latter, the sociologist André Siegfried said: “The center, which reasonable people would like to be a large plateau with a square base, is unfortunately only a tapered edge with two slopes, or rather – because that would still be too simple – a tangle of ridges, which however inexorably share the trends between the two slopes.”*
Between now and June 30, this camp of responsibility, if it still wants to have a chance of being present on the ballots during the second round on July 7, must pull itself together. No, it is no longer the property of Emmanuel Macron. For a simple reason: macronism has lived on, even if the head of state promised in a letter to the French “to act until May 2027”.
It is a renewed political offer that will come out of the polls. Whatever the scenario, cohabitation will open up. In two out of three cases, it will be combative. In the event of a victory for the center, it will be in power, with a Prime Minister who will no longer be a simple collaborator: his mission, if he wants to have a chance of succeeding, will be to reconnect with the country. Not just through communication. But through action and perception. “We focused too much on the macro, whereas for the French, what counts is the micro,” we admit in the corridors of the Elysée.
In 2017, a political leader clearly understood this need to get closer to the French. “We will only find the deep breathing of democracy in reconnecting with the variety of reality, with the diversity of this French society from which our institutions have too carefully kept themselves, admitting change only for others but not for them.” An observation signed by Emmanuel Macron.
* Table of parties in France, by André Siegfried, 1930.
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