Pensions: the secret scenario proposed to Macron

Emmanuel Macron what hes up to on the institutions

The story circulates at the top of the state, where several relatives of Emmanuel Macron evoke with him a scenario inspired by that of 1984. A reminder of the facts is not useless, the current president was 6 years old at the time. . That year, François Mitterrand was regularly and strongly challenged in the street. On June 24, in what is the largest public rally in Paris since the Liberation, some 1.4 million demonstrators demand the rejection of a bill on free schools, presented by the Minister of Education Alain Savary. The crisis lasted several months, inextricable, it poisoned the general climate and weighed on all government action.

On July 5, the head of the socialist state is traveling to Auvergne, where he defends his government and attacks opponents of the Savary project. There is no doubt that he will not back down. A week later, François Mitterrand intervened on television: he proposed the organization of a referendum which would make it possible to extend… the referendum to questions of civil liberties. “Nothing will be possible or lasting if you let yourself be drawn into excessive divisions,” he says to the French, to show his desire to overcome the fractures that have arisen between the country and him. The Savary reform, which is then in the hands of Parliament, is in fact suspended, it will disappear completely.

To prepare his counter-offensive, Mitterrand opted for absolute secrecy, to the point of keeping Pierre Mauroy away: his Prime Minister will not be informed until the day before the speech. Adviser Michel Charasse, who shares the president’s thinking, takes a Mystère 20 alone to join him at Cairo airport and thus work during the return flight with Mitterrand, after the latter’s lunch with his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak – at At that time, such a move did not cause an outcry.

A real political rebound

This is the first lesson that Emmanuel Macron’s friends retain from the episode: to regain control, the surprise must be total, to the point that the withdrawal of the Savary text will be eclipsed in the media by the announcement of this famous “referendum on the referendum”, a pure maneuver that will never lead to anything! It is also about changing terrain to better counter-attack. Finally, the Prime Minister is necessarily the victim of the maneuver. On July 17, 1984, Pierre Mauroy had no choice but to resign. He was replaced in the process by a certain Laurent Fabius, 37 years and 11 months, the youngest head of government in the history of republican France. We meet once again ! It is he who, almost 39 years later, finds himself at the head of the Constitutional Council, towards which all eyes are turned: the nine Elders must in fact decide within a maximum period of one month (from their referral, March 21) on the text of the executive.

When they discuss with Emmanuel Macron this point in the history of the Fifth Republic, the friends insist on the benefits of the operation: François Mitterrand had managed to turn the page and made a real political rebound; better, the new government had known a form of state of grace.

Comparison is not right, these faithful of the president obviously know it. The Fifth Republic is no longer that of 1984. Let’s face it, it is formally, but the institutions now look bad, the cogs are no longer as solid, public opinion no longer reacts in the same way. And the replacement of the seven-year term by the five-year term has modified the general balance. That’s not all. In 1984, the Savary project emanated more from the Socialist Party than from François Mitterrand, attached, by his roots, to the free school. This time, pension reform was at the heart of candidate Macron’s campaign in 2022. If several points are more the choice of Elisabeth Borne (choice of legislative vehicle, extended calendar), the text first bears the presidential mark. With the return of short, cookie-cutter phrases, Tuesday, March 21 at the Elysee Palace in front of parliamentarians (“the crowd” has “no legitimacy in the face of the people who express themselves sovereign through their elected representatives”), then with his intervention on television the following day, the Head of State returned to the center of the game.

But his desire to distance himself is nevertheless obvious. In his television interview, the more Emmanuel Macron “assumed”, the more he stood out from Elisabeth Borne. Twice it was obvious: by affirming, after having asked her to build a program of government and to enlarge the majority, “I hope that she will succeed”, a sentence maturely thought out in advance; noting that it was she who had decided to engage 49.3. The version is not exactly the same at Matignon, where we note that certainly, the words of Emmanuel Macron correspond to the constitutional truth – it is the government which engages its responsibility – but also that in practice, the recourse to 49.3 was born from several meetings in which both the President and the Prime Minister always participated.

“Fuse: person assuming an intermediate responsibility, often to protect his hierarchical superior”, says the Larousse. Yes, Elisabeth Borne recognizes that she used the word well during a meeting. But as children say, it is not he who says who is. The problem today is more the age of 64 as the retirement age than her. And on this point, the real meeting will come after the decision of the Constitutional Council. The president will therefore be required to promulgate, but has, according to article 10 of the Constitution, fifteen days to “ask Parliament for a new deliberation of the law or of certain of its articles”, depending in particular on what will be said the Sages. Since his friends talk to him about Mitterrand, how far is Emmanuel Macron ready to endorse this sentence of his predecessor, pronounced two days after his coup of July 12, 1984: “I am also worried about what those who do not think don’t think like me and I take that into account”?

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