The year 2022 reminded us that peace has an end. 2024 reminds us that democracy can also have one. The July 7 vote marks a further step in the slow decrepitude of a system that a growing number of citizens are rejecting more and more brutally. Nearly 215 far-left and far-right deputies will meet in the Palais-Bourbon in a few days. How did we get here?
It’s actually very simple. Result, method and narrative: three pillars on which the French people’s trust in our democratic system rested have, in a few months, broken one after the other. At the end of 2023, 41% of those surveyed agreed that “it would be better to have less democracy and more efficiency”. A lack of results linked to the amateurism of a National Assembly deprived of both local elected officials since the end of the accumulation of mandates in 2014 but also of new talents that hyper-transparency has kept away from the political sphere. But this crisis of inefficiency has indeed reached its peak during Emmanuel Macron’s second term. A president without an absolute majority, trapped in an “at the same time” more than ever endured. A certainty of being able to do it alone and without the right which will have ultimately prevented him from carrying out the reforms nevertheless acclaimed by the French to restore order in the accounts, in the street, at school and at our borders.
A democracy incapable of providing answers to the French but also unable to produce the slightest method to achieve them. Indeed, the pension reform as well as the examination of the immigration bill have illustrated the profound change in the springs of public debate. From now on, invectives serve as arguments, violence replaces discussions and reason fades in favor of passion. A fever that reached the president himself when, in a reflex that was both immature and proud, he dissolved the Assembly. And here are the French summoned to decide on the future of the country after a quick campaign built on empty slogans, demagogic promises and acts of violence, and sometimes with the candidacy of a man under guardianship or that of a hostage-taker as a political offer…
Certainly, the worst could have been avoided but…
The final blow to the contract that binds the French to the democratic pact was given during the second round. Indeed, the narrative of the people who sovereignly decide their future was shelved. It is now constrained by the partisan compromises of political leaders who save what they can, except their honor, that the voice of the French was heard during the second round. The President of the Republic ultimately only let the French express themselves half-heartedly by compromising himself with an anti-Semitic, communitarian and demagogic far left. The very one he pointed out in a letter addressed to the French a few weeks before. Certainly, the worst, that is to say an absolute majority for the RN, was avoided but with the consequence of a National Assembly even more ungovernable than the previous one.
However, it would be a great misunderstanding not to hear what the millions of French people who elected 143 far-right MPs clearly wanted: first, a return to order in a society undermined by hyperviolence linked to the explosion of drug trafficking and the deep crisis in our education system. They then expressed a great expectation in terms of purchasing power that cannot be financed by tax increases, but rather by a better orientation of public spending.
Finally, it would be a serious mistake in the passion of the moment to remove what has worked in the policy conducted in recent years and has made our economy one of the most resilient in the eurozone. Otherwise, the nightmare that could have been avoided this time will not be avoided next time. The extremists will then be able to finish discrediting a regime that could thus die without boots or caps. This is sometimes how democracies die…
Jean-François Copé, former minister, mayor (LR) of Meaux
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