MACRON. What will be the consequences of the results of the legislative elections for Emmanuel Macron? If the calendar of the five-year term, which backs the legislative elections to the presidential, theoretically ensures a coherent majority to the head of state just elected, Emmanuel Macron does not seem to benefit from any state of grace…
[Mis à jour le 12 juin 2022 à 14h09] Faced with multiple criticisms and controversies since April 24, the date of his re-election as President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron nevertheless went to the front at the very end of the legislative campaign, with four trips supposed to “illustrate the priorities of the five-year term”, in particular “youth” and “everyday security”, indicated his entourage to AFP. The opportunity to attack (finally?) his opponents. In the Tarn, the head of state castigated the “extreme” who “propose to add crisis to crisis by going back to the great historical choices of our Nation”. He attacked without naming them the coalition of the Nupes and the RN of Marine Le Pen who want, according to him, “to return to the alliances which, like NATO, ensure collective security and protect the peoples” at the moment “when I speak with Russia killing civilians in Ukraine”.
It must be said that Emmanuel Macron did not benefit from the traditional state of grace. For the first days of his five-year term, Emmanuel Macron was confronted with a series of scandals and controversies, immediately or almost after his re-election. A black series which came to blur both the renewal sequence promised by the Head of State and the reshuffle carried out in mid-May, but which also weighed down the campaign of the majority, forced to put out the fires one after the other until the day before the first round or almost.
On May 21, the day after the appointment of the Borne government, the Abad affair plunged the new Minister of Solidarity into accusations of rape. He is the second minister accused in this way after Gérald Darmanin, who benefited from a dismissal in another case. On May 28, the Champions League final at the Stade de France, which was to be a showcase for Paris before the 2024 Olympics, turns to fisaco. A cluster bomb that continues to do damage today. On May 31, INSEE publishes particularly worrying figures on rising prices, the government is already under pressure in the face of inflation. On June 9, during a trip to the Tarn, Emmanuel Macron was strongly challenged by a high school student who accused him of putting “at the head of the state men who are accused of rape and violence against women”. The next day, the last day of the official campaign for the legislative elections, the press reveals that the latter received, in her high school, a visit from the gendarmerie…
An “annoyed”, “angry”, even feverish Macon?
Faced with these controversies in series, the entourage of Emmanuel Macron did not fail to leak his annoyance or even his frank anger. The abolition of the diplomatic corps, planned for a long time but published in the Official Journal at the end of the presidential campaign, which is causing disorder among the ambassadors? “You will thank the idiot who, six days before the first round, has found nothing better to do than to delete this thing. It drives me crazy this kind of bullshit”, he would have carried away according to Figaro. Chaos at the Stade de France during the Champions League final? A “pitiful spectacle”, “shameful” and “unworthy of France”. According to Le Canard enchaîné as BFMTV, the “furious” President of the Republic would himself have stepped up to the plate to “expressly” ask the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin “to stop explaining that we were not responsible for anything “.
These “cold” or “black” anger, if they have the advantage of clearing Emmanuel Macron and putting the responsibility on these teams, are also the manifestations of a certain feverishness before the legislative elections. Because for the first time since the adoption of the five-year term twenty years ago, the majority is not assured for the elected president. While theoretically, the calendar which backs the legislative elections to the presidential must ensure a coherent majority to the winner of the supreme election, all the polls published during the campaign have put La République en Marche (Together!) elbow-to-neck -elbow with the “New Popular Ecological and Social Union” formed on the left for these elections.
In this context, apart from a few confidential in the press and a few interviews, including one in the regional press last week, Emmanuel Macron has opted for extreme media discretion that some describe as “mutism” during this legislative campaign. After having assured that he wanted to “act faster and stronger” in all areas, in particular on “ecology, health, education” or “full employment”, the Head of State was caught up, as during his presidential campaign, by inflation and the question of purchasing power, which forced the executive to announce emergency measures in the press. Commitments at this stage, more than concrete measures, for lack of time before the election.
Apart from a trip to announce a “flash mission” on the emergency crisis from Cherbourg, another in Marseilles with its new Minister of Education Pap Ndiaye on the theme of school and a last one in the Tarn on the security, Emmanuel Macron’s field campaign was also limited to its minimum portion. It is therefore the government and its new ministers, starting with the first of them, Elisabeth Borne, who will have been in the front line to try to convince before the legislative elections. The refusal or the impossibility for the Head of State to jump into the fray in the 6 weeks separating the two elections did not fail to make the opposition react, Marine Le Pen in particular who evoked a form of ” vacancy of power” when others have already pointed to the immobility of the Elysée.
If part of the majority believes that it is not up to the Head of State to campaign for the legislative elections – Jean-Luc Mélenchon also felt that it was not his role -, others are worried. yet from this absence of powerful discourse and key measurement, as reported Point early June. But by remaining in the background, Emmanuel Macron would also be in a strategy which is reminiscent of that of the first round of the presidential election, when the head of state, monopolized by the war in Ukraine, had declined all debate or almost. While his first five-year term had been marked by the launch of numerous construction sites, Emmanuel Macron would like to avoid, in this tense economic and social context, facing a new movement of mood in the street, traumatized by the crisis of yellow vests in 2018 Exit therefore shock statements and divisive measures. The president-elect would take the risk of anesthetizing the campaign, to take advantage of the momentum of the presidential election without pointing, even if it means letting the idea of a third round settle. It is undoubtedly this vacuum which will have left the place with the polemics precisely, but also with Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Nupes which are engulfed in the breach which will have been the true organizers of this election.
The president-candidate came out on top in both rounds of the 2022 presidential election seeming to dominate the political game from start to finish. Her victory in the evening of the second round on Sunday April 24 with 58.54% of the vote was therefore not a surprise, but she will have been marked by a gap with Marine Le Pen considerably reduced compared to 2017. The candidate of the National Rally s came out with 41.46% of the vote against 33.90% five years earlier. The other important figure for this election concerns the rate of abstention gauged at 28.01%, apart from in 1969 never have so many voters shunned the ballot boxes in a presidential election.
It was on the Champ de Mars that Emmanuel Macron delivered his victory speech on Sunday April 24. He thanked the French for “trusting him to preside over our Republic for the next five years” had a word for each voter, in particular those of Marine Le Pen and for the abstainers to whom he promised to be the “president of all and all”. A promise that will not be easy to keep but which is, according to the head of state and his supporters, at the heart of Emmanuel Macron’s project.
“This vote obliges me” recognized the winner during his speech before promising a change of method, a “collective overhaul” rather than continuity for this new five-year term even if that means that “the years to come will not be easy. . […] We will have to write them for future generations, for our children.”