These are moments which, although they may seem at first glance rather negligible for the general interest, can lastingly fracture an alliance. This Tuesday, October 22 in the evening, the election was held for the position of vice-president of the National Assembly left vacant by the LR deputy Annie Genevard, who joined the government of Michel Barnier as Minister of Agriculture. For this ballot, a clear rule: if in the third round, no candidate obtained an absolute majority, then the one who came first is elected.
Enough to leave the field open for Virginie Duby-Muller, the LR candidate of the “common base” between the presidential camp and the right, who had a reservoir of votes in principle greater than any other group or alliance. Except that nothing went as planned. And it was ultimately the environmentalist deputy Jérémie Iordanoff who was elected last night, ahead of the right-wing candidate by 14 votes. With an obvious observation: many votes from the alliance between Macronists and LR were missing to elect the deputy for Haute-Savoie, therefore allowing the deputy from the New Popular Front to win.
“It’s the defeat of the common base”
On the side of the left-wing elected officials, this victory is obviously a great satisfaction, while the NFP now controls three of the six vice-presidencies of the National Assembly, with those of the rebellious deputies Clémence Guetté and Nadège Abomangoli. “It is the defeat of the common base. We see that they are no longer the majority in this chamber, their division cost them a vice-presidency,” Jérémie Iordanoff reacted to the press. “This victory is first and foremost that of the union of the New Popular Front. This bloc of support for Michel Barnier has no programmatic coherence and no solidarity in important moments,” underlined the president of the group ecologist Cyrielle Chatelain.
“Michel Barnier’s pseudo majority is a puzzle whose pieces are visibly very scattered…”, reacted the boss of the PS, Olivier Faure. “Without the RN, the so-called Barnier bloc of the right and the Macronists is constantly beaten by the NFP. Phony team, bogus strategy, Macron and Barnier are useless nuisances,” said Jean-Luc Mélenchon for his part.
A faulty MoDem application?
Unsurprisingly, the result is much more bitter on the side of the support – more or less clear – for the government of Michel Barnier. On the side of the Ensemble pour la République (formerly Renaissance) group, an anonymous source clearly places the blame on a MoDem candidacy which was “of no use”, and assures that the centrists have been “responsible from the start”.
Indeed, the MoDem insisted on presenting its own candidate in the first and second rounds of the ballot, Christophe Blanchet. The latter obtained 69 votes in the first round – against 127 for Virginie Duby-Muller – and 46 votes in the second round – against 125 for the MP for Haute-Savoie, and 149 for Jérémie Iordanoff -, before withdrawing for the third round . But while Virginie Duby-Muller obtained 161 votes in the third round, against 175 votes for the environmentalist deputy, the calculations are clear: the elected LR was in any case far from having filled up on the “common base”. Even more, certain centrist deputies might even have chosen to vote for the NFP candidacy rather than that of the Republicans.
“When there are unnatural alliances, it can’t work”
This vote being secret, the end of this story will surely never be revealed. But you don’t have to look very far to imagine the reasons that pushed certain centrist elected officials not to support Virginie Duby-Muller. Because in the presidential camp, many people have retained strong resentment towards LR for another election to a key position in the Assembly: that for the presidency of the Economic Affairs Committee.
On October 9, it was in fact the candidate of the EPR group, Stéphane Travers, who was narrowly beaten by the rebellious MP Aurélie Trouvé, notably due to not having benefited from the votes of the right in favor of his candidacy . An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth? “There are necessarily MoDems who did not vote for the LR. When there are unnatural alliances, it cannot work […] Gabriel Attal has become the ventriloquist of (Laurent) Wauquiez”, president of the LR group, MoDem MP Richard Ramos told AFP. “It is not because Laurent Wauquiez has not respected his commitments that we must do the same […] It is clear that the MoDem does not help us on this issue,” retorts those around Gabriel Attal.
To the press, the president of the MoDem group Marc Fesneau wanted to calm things down, affirming not to be “satisfied at all” with this result, and assured that he had “asked (his) deputies to ensure that this not the NFP which has the seat”. But this one also wants to be lucid. “I’m making additions. I see that Christophe Blanchet lost 23 votes between the first and second round and that these 23 votes did not go to Ms. Duby-Muller,” he said, as reported by AFP, suspecting “people who supported the candidate Stéphane Travert for the Economic Affairs Committee” of being “really not happy”. The atmosphere is in any case set for the future. Because a disagreement between deputies from the presidential camp and those from the right for positions in the Assembly promises heated discussions when it comes time to fully agree on a budget.