Is this how Constitutions die? That of 1958, approved in its time by 82% of the French, suffers more and more, in these unreasonable times when what is legal is no longer legitimate. Besides, who still reads it? In its first paragraph, Article 3 stipulates: “National sovereignty belongs to the people who exercise it through their representatives and by way of referendum. The people and the parliamentarians, on an equal basis. Representative democracy is perhaps dead a Thursday afternoon in March 2023 and historians will be able to see, like Hercule Poirot in The crime of the Orient Expressthat everyone has done their part.
The executive, of course. Emmanuel Macron has never been the best ambassador of parliamentarism, a question of culture, a question of career, a question of personality. His main collaborator, the secretary general of the Elysée Alexis Kohler, hides his admiration for the deputies well, he who, during the first term, in the midst of a debate on … pensions, had one day summoned the president of the LREM group, Gilles Le Gendre, to forbid his troops any contact with Laurent Berger. “Ah yes? and how do I do? A memo?”, had quipped the leader of the Walkers. Among these people, only efficiency, the mantra of their public action, prevails, which supposes, in detail, that it is there.
The political class as a whole, always inclined, as we have seen on many occasions, to dig its own grave, has strongly helped to screw up the tools to exercise power. “Until Michel Rocard, the 49.3 was perceived as the jewel of the rationalization of parliamentarism, it was not an anomaly but a mode of operation, certainly brutal, intended to put everyone before their responsibilities, intended to sort out the essential of the accessory, recalls our columnist, the constitutionalist Denys de Béchillon.Since the constitutional revision of 2008 which restricted its use (it was even considered its abolition), we have accredited the idea that it was junk, it was called an extremist and obscene solution: people now think it’s something like a coup d’etat.”
In the days leading up to March 16, in a suicidal outburst, all the ministers rushed to the microphones to hammer that the government would not resort to 49.3 – you think, that democratic abomination. Another attitude was possible: this article was often used in full parliamentary discussion to put an end to the disorder in the majority; this time – which is rare in history – it was at the end of the process, after a conclusive joint committee, and therefore after substantial parliamentary work, that it was drawn.
Is it a revolt? No, Sire, it’s a revolution
Regardless, this practice of power is no longer accepted. It feeds, it accentuates the break between the elites and the people. And the opponents of the Fifth Republic, driven by strong winds, come out of the woods. Jean-Luc Mélenchon does not hide it, he fights institutions. He did everything to force his own group of deputies not to debate article 7 of the bill, which pushes the legal retirement age to 64, and in the process not to go to the vote. of the text as a whole. Then he lamented that the reform had “no parliamentary legitimacy” since it had not been approved by the Assembly. Indeed… For her part, the president of the LFI group in the National Assembly, Mathilde Panot, succeeded in her coup: she cast opprobrium on the joint committee, once the place par excellence of parliamentary discussion in the best sense. of the term – the search for a consensus -, denounced now as the height of opacity and “combination”. LFI deputies do not believe in representativeness, and therefore they do not believe in their role: as a result, they do not seek to exercise it, contenting themselves with accrediting the idea that Parliament is just an impediment to parade in the street in circles and blocking the country.
The 2022 presidential election gave Emmanuel Macron a legitimacy that was immediately challenged. Like the one given to the National Assembly in the legislative elections of June, because they had a preposterous result. During the first five-year term, Emmanuel Macron declared on April 16, 2018: “I do not think that the 65% who voted for me in the second round all have massive support for my program. But I do not believe that there is had an ambiguity in the legislative elections, in the first and second rounds.” Here is today’s president caught up in his reasoning yesterday. In recent days, we have rather heard opponents calling for “street democracy”, a concept that deserves to be refined – or not: it is from this shock that the political violence caused by the use of 49.3 comes. If elections are no longer a machine for providing legitimacy, there is a problem.
Is it a revolt? No, Sire, it’s a revolution. At the Elysée Palace, the question is whispered: is this a political crisis or a crisis of the regime? It’s not exactly the same thing. The president, who had already begun his reflections on the institutions by consulting in particular his two predecessors, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, knows the difficulty of acting on this hot ground and in an emergency, so much the resentment is important. He wants to continue to discuss with each other – he will meet again the presidents of the Senate and the Assembly, Gérard Larcher and Yaël Braun-Pivet, will also probably see the associations of local elected representatives received last week.
There is the substance: the organization of the territories, the accumulation of responsibilities, the democratic breathing which can depend on the duration of the mandates of the president and the deputies, citizen participation… The method of voting for the legislative elections is at the heart of the subject: discussions now focus less on the introduction of a dose of proportional than on a return to 1986, full proportional. Caution. We always praise the Israeli model: we see what it is currently giving, which in no way prevents an extremist government. Or German, but it was the electoral system across the Rhine that allowed the Greens to push back Angela Merkel the scientist and impose a decision on nuclear power, considered in hindsight as a major heresy.
The search for original solutions
There is also the form: what are the passageways for a head of state so weakened, lacking reliable allies? If a stalemate appears (the prior vote of the two Assemblies is essential before any constitutional revision), no one can prevent the President from organizing a referendum on points not falling within the fundamental law: this is the case of the mode of ballot for the legislative elections, the number of parliamentarians and several other topics.
However, the political situation calls for finding original solutions to get Emmanuel Macron out of his splendid isolation, which the pension episode will not help to reduce. Hence the reflection underway at the top of the State: some plead for a pact to be established with the authorities ready to move and imagine that a president who does not stand for re-election, who puts forward measures that do not apply to he – in a word, whose personal fate would not be at stake – finds a space to act and consult citizens directly.
It is not from the improvement of democratic life alone that the solution to all French ills will come. “Irrationality is growing all over the world. Denial of reality too. It is one of the breeding grounds of populism. Make no mistake: neither this problem nor its solution lies in the mechanics of institutional systems. None of them knows how to prevent this development or fight against it. It is much more serious and much deeper”, warns Denys de Béchillon. But the fracture is there, perhaps fatal.