FRANCOIS HOLLANDE. While François Hollande is invited to Emmanuel Macron’s investiture ceremony this Saturday, May 7, 2022, the relationship between the former and current tenants of the Elysée Palace is more strained than ever…
François Hollande back at the Elysée. Five years after the moribund end of his mandate, the former head of state, who had given up on himself in 2017, is guests at the second investiture ceremony of Emmanuel Macron, this Saturday, May 7, 2022 Every word and every gesture of François Hollande will be scrutinized again during this ceremony, the socialist, who challenged the recent agreement of the PS with LFI, considering the current President of the Republic as one of those responsible for the death of his family. political and still and always cultivating a stubborn resentment against his former protege. François Hollande recently pointed out the shortcomings of Emmanuel Macron during an interview with the American channel CNN.
In this interview broadcast on April 28, 2022, François Hollande recognizes that Emmanuel Macron is “intelligent” and capable of making “bold decisions”. But he criticizes him for not having “succeeded in building a political force behind him” and for not having “succeeded in establishing his authority over a particular party”. Worse: according to François Hollande, “the situation in France is much more fragile” than what the re-election of Emmanuel Macron at the end of April might suggest. “The center right, that of Charles de Gaulle and Jacques Chirac, and the left of François Mitterrand, Lionel Jospin and myself, have been shattered. Which means that the extremes are the only alternatives to Emmanuel Macron “, analyzes the former socialist president, criticizing Emmanuel Macron in half-words for having done everything to annihilate the government parties in order to confront the far right in 2022 to ensure his re-election: “Unless the traditional parties do not rebuild, the risk that the far right will come to power is real” now according to him.
François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron’s relationship is the result of an almost unique and almost historic political betrayal in the Fifth Republic. Working from 2012 for the newly elected socialist president, as deputy secretary general of the Elysée, Emmanuel Macron will establish a “quasi-filial relationship” with François Hollande. The rest is known today: while the Head of State and his entourage will contribute to the rise of Emmanuel Macron, praising his qualities and including him in the most sensitive files, the latter will finally succeed, in a few months, “the coup of the century” by preparing his campaign for the 2017 presidential election.
François Hollande will remain blind for a long time, both subjugated and confident towards his dolphin, as explained in particular by Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme in the book The traitor and nothingness (Fayard, 2021). Manuel Valls, Prime Minister until December 2016, will have understood Emmanuel Macron’s ambitions and impatience much earlier. Alas, the reversal will be spectacular. When he became Minister of the Economy, Industry and Digital from the summer of 2014, Emmanuel Macron was still a centerpiece of Holland. But, two years later, on August 30, 2016, it was the big change: he resigned from Bercy in order to grow his just launched movement, En Marche!.
For François Hollande, it is already too late: Emmanuel Macron declares himself a candidate for the presidential election in mid-November, after a sequence of false suspense. The outgoing President of the Republic, unpopular and cornered, resigns a few days later and the ambitious young minister is elected after a campaign that he will have almost flown over, under the banner of his new party. A centrist formation already leaning more and more to the right.
Emmanuel Macron’s victory will appear as a real snub or even a trauma for François Hollande, who can only cling to the branches and boast of having paved the way for his former protege. The first days of the five-year term, during the transition, he displayed a benevolent, protective, almost paternalistic attitude. An attitude that will quickly give way to growing animosity. The critical, disapproving, even scathing interventions of François Hollande vis-à-vis Emmanuel Macron have become more and more recurrent, through speeches in the media or in his books.
First in private but very quickly publicly, François Hollande will change his speech on Emmanuel Macron and multiply the spikes against his successor. In recent years, he has, on many occasions, expressed his skepticism about the mode of governance and the decisions of Emmanuel Macron. He even described the latter as a “kind of default choice” because of the “lack of alternative” during his Grand interview with France Inter October 20, 2021. If François Hollande recognized the “pragmatism” of his successor, he also deplored his “lack of doctrine”. “A country needs to have a meaning, a vision,” insisted the former head of state.
In Confront, published by Editions Stock in 2021, François Hollande wrote: “it appeared to me that social dialogue was neither one of Emmanuel Macron’s priorities nor his methods of reform”. In this very transparent book, he admitted that he “still does not know” what the representative of LREM “believes four years later”, regretting his lack of a fixed ideology, of a political dream: “it changes according to the color of the sky”. Then, the former president had a few words for Emmanuel Macron’s reform record, deemed “rarely thin”, as well as for his responsibilities: “he is a president who has torn the French people apart”.
In this book, François Hollande represents Emmanuel Macron as “the standard bearer of a technocracy often ignorant of the real life of the French”. This type of confession has become a habit for François Hollande, he who had tackled the theme of Emmanuel Macron’s betrayal in his previous book, lessons of powerpublished in 2018 and sold more than 120,000 copies in large format.
Despite these differences, François Hollande does not openly make himself the enemy of Emmanuel Macron. A few days before the second round of the 2022 presidential election was held, he officially called on the French to vote for Macron during his appearance at 8 p.m. on TF1. He had justified this choice in the name of “the cohesion of France”, of “its European future and its independence”. The importance for him was to block the candidacy of Marine Le Pen, she who, according to him, would have “challenged our principles and our values”. Ironically, a few days before this support from François Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy, who was his adversary for many years, had done the same, provoking strong reactions in the camp of the Republicans.
François Hollande will only be able to see after this election the death of the Socialist Party: after the hour of defections from 2016 to 2020, came the lack of means linked to the defeats in the intermediate elections. The mobilization of socialist voters was sharply reduced, with a vote falling from 26.38% of the vote in the first round and to 51.64% in the second round of 2012 for François Hollande, to only 6.36% in 2017 for Benoît Hamon, until falling below the 2% mark with the candidacy of the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo in 2022.
François Hollande joined the PS in 1979. He was first adviser to François Mitterrand, then project manager for economic issues. From 1983, he held local (in Corrèze in Limousin) and parliamentary mandates. In 1994, he notably became first secretary and spokesperson for the PS. As a member of the European Parliament, he declared himself in favor of the European Constitution in 2002, thus opposing the number 2 of the Party, Laurent Fabius. Therefore, the PS appears divided in the eyes of the French. During the presidential election of 2007, he chose to step aside in favor of his partner Ségolène Royal. On the other hand, the presidential election of 2012 will propel him to the front of the stage, since at the end of the citizens’ primary, he was nominated candidate of the PS.
On May 15, 2012, François Hollande becomes the 24th President of the Republic. He obtained 28.63% of the votes in the first round then 51.64% of the votes against outgoing President Nicolas Sarkozy. He appoints Jean-Marc Ayrault as prime minister. The president’s popularity rating fell over the months, falling below the 20% mark in January 2014. During the reshuffle announced after the defeat of the socialist party in the municipal elections of the same year, François Hollande decided to elect Manuel Valls to head of the new government. On May 7, 2017, Emmanuel Macron succeeded him as President of the French Republic.