The oldest remember it: it was on March 16 that the first cohabitation in the history of the Fifth Republic was born. In 1986, the legislative elections, a single proportional vote, sent a right-wing majority hostile to the President of the Republic, who was then called François Mitterrand, to the National Assembly. Political France was fractured like never before.
Today’s fractures are of a completely different magnitude and if Thursday March 16, 2023 is a date that Emmanuel Macron has checked off his diary, he has added many question marks to it. March 16, you might think it’s almost tomorrow – except that in the meantime, there is the dark day of March 7, and its possible aftershocks. In an ideal world with Macron’s sauce – which France in 2023 does not resemble at all – Parliament should have resolved the situation: at the end of the debate in the Senate, the joint committee should have pronounced on the draft law reforming pensions and a solemn vote in the Assembly – finally a vote – should have taken place on March 15, unless recourse to article 49-3 comes to further complicate the situation.
There was a time when it was said that this reform would bring Emmanuel Macron a political victory on which he could build the rest of his five-year term. To date we see more what this text costs than what it brings. Triple burden, according to Bernard Sananès, president of the Elabe Institute, who notes in Opinion : “This definitely turns the page on ‘at the same time’ and installs the five-year term on the right. This buries the promise of new governance promised by Emmanuel Macron for his second term. While the President of whatever the cost had rebalanced the image of the president of the rich, the pension reform anchors again the idea that he leads a policy for the most favored.
LR: a weak ally is not a reliable ally
The historical macronists do not want their great leader to become, from March 16, a right-wing president, but they are aware that the ideals of the beginnings are definitely moving away. Because the situation in Parliament brings about the end of macronism as an autonomous space. Here lies the original Macron, for whom the very idea of a deal was dirty, and who recognized only one principle: strength calls for strength. The concept of coalition is hardly more appropriate. “The idea of a coalition, with a central party surrounded by a movement on the right and another on the left, we do not know how to do”, confides a minister on the front line on the pension file. And the right, thanks to which the pension reform could end up passing, is more a problem than a solution. LR is weak, and a weak ally is not a reliable ally.
Two priorities are therefore essential for the future: redefining an identity of macronism; fight “the feeling of the end of the five-year term” which has been hovering since the victorious election of 2022, according to the formula of a historic traveling companion of the president. Vast program, as General de Gaulle would say. It happened tomorrow.