Sometimes it is good to be rigid. Bernard Cazeneuve has always rejected alliances with the extreme left and there was no question of these unprecedented legislative elections making an exception. He therefore said no, loud and clear, to the New Popular Front, embodying, somewhat alone, a Republican left refusing to turn a blind eye to the excesses, anti-Semitism and communitarian discourses of a part of La France insoumise, notably .
The former Prime Minister does not give up his intransigence either when it comes to examining the behavior of our political leaders, from all sides. According to him, it is them and them alone who are responsible for the uneasiness felt by certain citizens towards our institutions. Cazeneuve forgets no one, not even our presidents: “When the presidents of the Republic become ministers of everything and as a result are no longer president of anything, it is their behavior, their relaxation which is open to criticism and not the institutions which were once capable of generating, at their head, other behaviors.” A skepticism which, ultimately, is also an optimism: there are no major institutional projects necessary to save the Republic, it is enough for elected officials, ministers, presidents, to reconnect with practices and conduct geared towards the collective interest.
L’Express: Do institutions still protect us from reality?
Bernard Cazeneuve: Sincerely, I believe it and moreover our institutions desired by General de Gaulle are very real. Even if certain aspects of reality, through their sneaky forms or their extreme violence, contribute to harming them.
Over the last fifteen years, France has had to face a series of serious crises which have tested, as rarely in its history, its capacity for resilience. The banking and financial crisis of the end of the 2000s, through its telluric and global dimension, tested the capacity of States to regulate international finance and to remain sovereign in the face of its disruptions. The terrorist crisis, since 2012, has tested the unity and indivisibility of the nation, by attempting to fracture, in France and elsewhere, democratic societies, after having sown the seeds of discord. The pandemic that hit the planet at the start of the 2020s represented a leap into the unknown, in the face of which science and public institutions showed their responsiveness to save lives, guarantee access to care and vaccines and spare the economy from the consequences of the serious disruptions caused by the virus on business life.
“It has sometimes happened that political actors, trapped within themselves and disconnected from the real world, mistreat institutions.”
The State therefore held on, despite the violence of the shocks of reality, and the institutions functioned regularly, allowing those at their head to fulfill their mission normally. Taking further historical perspective, no one can deny that the institutions of the Fifth Republic gave France, for nearly seventy years, political stability including the party regime, under the Fourth Republic, or the convulsive parliamentarism and sometimes turbulent of the 3rd had deprived it. Through institutional stability, France was able to overcome the challenge of decolonization, launch the country’s major industrialization programs, and ensure its independence through the implementation of deterrence. All this was done without making alternation impossible, nor without compromising the proper functioning of public authorities during periods of cohabitation.
On the other hand, it has sometimes happened that political actors, trapped within themselves and disconnected from the real world, have mistreated institutions. When Parliament becomes a theater of shadows because political behavior is degraded there, disrespect and then violence take hold, and citizens become desolate, it is not the Fifth Republic which is in danger. cause, but what has become of it under the effect of the digitalization of public life and a loss of the meaning of the Nation or the State. When the government transforms into a camarilla of technocratized and docile lackeys, it is not the powers devolved to it since 1958 that pose a problem, but a progressive drift in practices at the top of the State, partly under the effect of five year term. When the presidents of the Republic become ministers of everything and as a result are no longer president of anything, it is their practice, their behavior, their relaxation which is open to criticism and not the institutions which were once capable of generating, to their head, other behaviors. In short, in France, when mediocrity dominates we explain that institutions are running out of steam and that the time has come to change them. Which exempts those who damaged them the most from having to be held accountable.
Conversely, part of the population no longer perceives institutions in their daily life (justice, public services, police, schools, etc.). They have become almost invisible to them. How can we convince that they exist and that their vote will have consequences on these institutions?
It is necessary to distinguish political institutions – that is to say the central constituted powers and local authorities, at the head of which are elected officials vested with the legitimacy of the vote – from public services which arise from the action of its elected representatives. , but are distinguished by the fact that they are perceived by citizens as essential for their protection. Many of those who free themselves from the duty to vote, by taking refuge in abstention, would not conceive of ignoring the fight to maintain the hospital or nursery school, where they live. In a country where the State pre-existed the nation and where the nation was embodied in the State, the weakening of public services means the loss of meaning and power of the State, whose responsibility is attributed to those who run it. However, public services are made invisible by the effects of globalization, by slow deindustrialization and a process of territorial relegation of which the most vulnerable populations consider themselves to be the victims. The feeling of abandonment pushes people away from the polls and brings them closer to anger. Abstention and votes for the extremes result. The political crisis comes partly from there, reinforcing, it is true, the feeling that institutions and the exercise of power isolate and make elites indifferent to the suffering of the people.
What should be the safeguards of the Republic?
The Republic only functions well and lasts if three conditions are met. It is first necessary for power to be assumed and exercised and for those invested with its responsibility to be aware that their authority depends as much on their behavior towards the people and the respect in which they hold them, as on the powers with which they are invested by the Constitution. It is then necessary that through the arrangement of things, power stops power and that collective deliberation, the search for useful compromises – in other words wisdom – temper egotism. Finally, we need a deep sense of republican values, which are the foundation of our living together, and an ability to bring the people together around their defense.
To give institutions the breath they lack, the President of the Republic must regain his arbitral posture and emerge from the extreme verticality and solitude in which his practice of power has confined him, to once again become the guarantor of essential, that is to say the unity of the nation and the safeguarding of its superior interests. For its part, Parliament must be able to legislate more effectively so as to free up more time and resources for the exercise of its control prerogatives. Finally, the role of intermediary bodies must be enshrined, in a country where force has most often prevailed over collective deliberation, the search for compromise useful for carrying out major reforms making it possible to achieve progress, particularly social progress.
What differences in dangers represent the extreme right and the extreme left for institutions?
France is the product of this singular political construction which, once again, saw the State pre-exist the nation and the nation incarnate in the State. Later the Republic gave both of them a melting pot of values which made it possible to guarantee the authority of the State on the one hand, but also the unity and indivisibility of the nation on the other. on the other hand, in absolute respect for the principles of the rule of law – including the independence of justice and pluralism combined with freedom of expression –, without which there is no lasting democracy. This is what we must cherish and preserve at all costs. The National Rally pretends to want to preserve this whole, and to convince us of this, adorns itself with all the appearances of respectability. In an intelligently orchestrated concealment operation, he wants to persuade us of the reality of a change: thus an organization whose founders were weaned from the milk of collaboration and the OAS, in a claimed racism and anti-Semitism, would have everything forgotten its origins, to the point of having changed its nature. Who can believe it? And who can forget that the leaders of the RN frequented, over the last few years, all the leaders of the European extreme right groups, from the German AFD to the party of Viktor Orban, who share their hostility to the European project, to democracy and the rule of law.
As for the far left, the NPA’s displayed jubilation in the face of the attack on a police station in La Courneuve in March 2024, the theorization of the consubstantiality of violence against the police by the LFI leaders, the leniency of these parties with regard to dictators, whether Putin or Maduro, their ambiguities repeatedly pointed out on the question of anti-Semitism or communitarianism testify that we should not expect anything, either, from this movement to protect the rule of law, freedom and the values we share. This is why the defense of values must govern alliances and not the other way around. This is not just a matter of morality, it is above all a guarantee of political effectiveness if we want to protect France from the advent of the worst.
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