While a council of ministers is to be held on Tuesday, July 16, according to AFP, negotiations are continuing within the New Popular Front (NFP) to agree on a candidate for the post of Prime Minister. While the rebels were pushing the name of Huguette Bello, the president of the Réunion region declined the “offer” this Sunday, July 14. On the presidential camp side, Gabriel Attal was elevated to the rank of leader of the Renaissance deputies on Saturday. Enough to irritate his opponents who denounce a confusion between parliamentary and executive power. Thus, Emmanuel Macron should accept the resignation of his government “Tuesday or Wednesday”, said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Monday.
Key information to remember
⇒ LFI accuses the socialists of blocking discussions on the name of Prime Minister
⇒ Charles de Courson says he is a candidate for the perch
⇒ Gérald Darmanin launches an appeal to the “republican” left
For LFI, “the blockage” comes from the PS
A week has passed since the second round of the early legislative elections, and the NFP still has no names to submit to Emmanuel Macron for Matignon. The fault lies with the socialists, claims Manuel Bompard, who explained on BFMTV this Monday morning that the negotiations on the left were “confronted with a deadlock situation due to the permanent refusals of the Socialist Party”.
According to the coordinator of La France insoumise, the socialists would have given “no argument” for their refusal to validate the proposal made by the insoumis of a candidacy of Huguette Bello, the president of the Réunion region. “We had this weekend a very interesting proposal, which did not come from us, it had been proposed by Fabien Roussel. […] I am angry at these systematic oppositions, these blockages, these vetoes.”
Accusations dismissed out of hand by the first secretary of the pink house. “We will be up to the task” and “nothing has been blocked”, replied Olivier Faure, official candidate of the socialists for Matignon.
A candidacy for the perch, LFI’s new priority
In the absence of agreement on the name of a candidate for the post of Prime Minister, the rebels suggest concentrating as a priority on the election of the future president of the National Assembly.
A tune sung by several rebellious executives, whose argument consists of saying that the rest will depend on this election. This is what Clémence Guetté, once tipped for Matignon, tried to explain. “What I am asking is that we can have a frank discussion with our partners in the New Popular Front to agree on a common candidacy [pour le ou la présidente de l’Assemblée nationale] […] “The rest will depend on this election to the National Assembly,” she said on TF1 on Monday morning.
It must be said that the left is playing big on this election to the perch: part of the Macronist camp has been trying for several days to build an alternative majority to the NFP in order to weigh on this key position, which Yaël Braun-Pivet intends to keep. An agreement with the right, for example, could allow the presidential bloc to overtake the left in number of votes. On CNews, LFI MEP Manon Aubry notably accused the outgoing president of the hemicycle of “scheming” with the National Rally to “distribute the key positions in the Assembly”.
Charles de Courson, candidate for the perch
Whoever the NFP candidate for the presidency of the National Assembly is, he will have to face the centrist deputy Charles de Courson who announced his candidacy in a press release on Monday, July 15. The deputy from Marne, elected for the first time and without interruption since 1993, promised to be the “guarantor of its proper functioning” in an “unprecedented and chaotic period”.
“In this unprecedented and chaotic period, it is essential that the President of the National Assembly be the guarantor of its proper functioning, of the dignity and depth of the debates and that he is not at the service of partisan coalitions, sometimes contradictory and driven by the sole objective of distributing positions among themselves,” declared the man who became known to the general public for his fervent opposition to the pension reform.
And this budgetary enthusiast continued: “It is in this context that I declared my candidacy for the presidency of the National Assembly because I deeply believe in the importance of the role of Parliament in preserving parliamentary democracy, particularly in its mission of control, in compliance with our Constitution and an essential political pluralism.”
Gérald Darmanin’s attempt to ostracize LFI and the Greens
On Franceinfo’s microphone this Monday morning, Gérald Darmanin once again made an appeal to the party with the rose. “If the socialists left the NFP, La France insoumise and the Greens […]we could of course work with reasonable, republican, secular socialists,” he confirmed. A way of ostracizing the rebels and the Greens, whose program he described last Thursday as “crazy.”
Last week, the tenant of Beauvau had called on his former political family, Les Républicains, to form a “coalition of ideas”. In concert with the Minister for Equality between Women and Men, Aurore Bergé, who spoke of a “coalition of projects”.
The new leader of the “Republican Right” (ex-LR) deputies, Laurent Wauquiez, for his part closed the door to any government coalition with Macronie, saying however that he was open to “a legislative pact” with “proposed laws” for the “revaluation of working France”.