The French government could be overthrown this Wednesday, December 4 by a motion of censure. A constitutional weapon in the hand of the opposition whose use is common, but its effectiveness is extremely rare under the Fifth Republic. And for good reason, the motion was successful only once, in 1962.
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At the time, there was no question of a budget. What is at issue is a referendum. “ The President of the Republic will henceforth be elected by universal suffrage. », says de Gaulle in September 1962. The idea of General de Gaulle goes down very badly with certain parliamentarians, because at the time, it was they who elected the president, recalls Raphaël Delvolve from the RFI political department. On October 4 of the same year, a motion of censure was filed against the government.
Yet an ally of the Gaullists, MP Paul Reynaud of the National Center of Independents and Peasants retorts: “ It’s the republic that answers “no” to your project. It is our honor as parliamentarians that is at stake. » Thanks to the rallying of this part from the right to the left, the Pompidou government fell on the night of October 4 to 5, 1962: “ Mr. Pompidou was to be the victim of the vote of censure acquired by 280 votes out of 480. »
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A provocation for General de Gaulle who keeps Georges Pompidou at Matignon, and above all uses a weapon which no longer has Emmanuel Macron today: the dissolution of the National Assembly, since we cannot proceed with two dissolutions and therefore with new legislative elections less than a year before the previous ones. “ It is entirely necessary for this majority to strengthen and grow, and first of all to establish in Parliament », insists the general. The bet was successful in the legislative elections: the Gaullist UDR party obtained a clearer majority.
The year 1962 will go down in the history of the Fifth Republic, since for the first time, a dissolution was pronounced, a motion of censure adopted and a budget voted through a special law, due to lack of a deadline being respected. Any resemblance to existing facts would obviously be purely coincidental.
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