They had been talking about it for several days: it has now been done. The deputies of La France insoumise published, this Saturday, August 31, their proposal to dismiss Emmanuel Macron. They accuse the president of “serious failure” in his “duty” by refusing to accede to the request of the New Popular Front to appoint Lucie Castets to Matignon, and call on parliamentarians to support her to “defend democracy”.
The procedure for impeaching the head of state, governed by Article 68 of the Constitution, is long and difficult to achieve. It would ultimately require the approval of two-thirds of the parliamentarians meeting in the High Court. A challenge, given that a large part of the left has shown itself reluctant to support it.
“The Assembly, like the Senate, can and must defend democracy against the authoritarian temptation of the President of the Republic, which we do not know where it would stop,” the LFI deputies nevertheless called in their proposed resolution which, according to the group leader Mathilde Panot, “was sent to the parliamentarians for co-signatures.”
“Political bargaining”
Their text considers that Emmanuel Macron’s refusal to appoint Lucie Castets, after consulting the various political forces, “constitutes a serious breach of the duty to respect the will expressed by universal suffrage”, arguing that the left-wing alliance came out on top in the last legislative elections (193 seats).
“The role of the President of the Republic in the light of the Constitution is not to engage in political bargaining in the National Assembly. Article 8 of the Constitution does not provide that the President ‘chooses a Prime Minister who pleases him’. It simply provides that the President of the Republic ‘appoints the Prime Minister'”, the LFI deputies further argue.
Believing after interviews that an NFP government would be immediately censored by the other political groups in the Assembly, Emmanuel Macron had ruled out the Lucie Castets option, in the name of “institutional stability”.
But the impeachment procedure “is a political tool which also allows the responsibility for the blockage to be placed on the Elysée”, constitutionalist Benjamin Morel told Public Sénat in August, a quote taken up in the Insoumis’ proposed resolution.