French protesters rage at ‘stolen election’ as Macron picks conservative Barnier for PM
French protesters rage at ‘stolen election’ as Macron picks conservative Barnier for PM
My personal little conspiracy theory as a French person:
The Président was fully expecting the far right and right to win so that they could be ridiculed while in power (since the very moment you are in power in France you are unpopular) therefore guaranteeing that the right and far right do not win the next presidential election. However the left unexpectedly won the election throwing off the plan. Due to this he has been forced to push through in nominating a conservative Prime Minister so that the right could be still ridiculed while in power and mobilizing more than ever the left, thus saving French democracy for the next presidential elections.
As an Englishman who has been loosely following the French elections since 2022, I think your theory is sound.
A lot of countries have been usurped by billionaire conservatism. A lot of countries would benefit from revolutions targeting billionaire conservatives.
Why is the President choosing the prime Minister?
Rather, what France's constitutional whatever that set that power structure up?
Here in [Commonwealth nation] we have a Governor General who officially accepts (as the Crown's representative) whichever coalition has majority in parliament as the new government and that government appoints their own prime Minister.
The trick here is that nobody had the majority at the parliament. Which is quite unusual in France compared to let's say Belgium where spending over 6 month to build a coalition is the norm.
Macron and moderate right say they don't wanna work with leftist killing the hypothesis of left wing government that moderate right can remove at any time. However, if Barnier allies with Macron party, and get at least the passive support of far right, he has a majority. But basically the kind of majority that far right can remove at any time. Not sure what deal with Le Pen was negotiated
In France the president normally chooses the prime minister backed by a majority in the national assembly, otherwise the majority would do a vote of no-confidence and the president has to find a new prime minister. The current problem is that there's no majority.
Not a lawyer but an informed citizen, I’d be happy to be corrected if I’m wrong.
That’s a spirit of the law vs letter of the law question which to my understanding has not been answered. I am no lawyer but the wording of our constitution is pretty ambiguous and leaves room to interpretation. I won't try and translate the article in question because as I said, not a lawyer and some blurred lines may be lost in my attempt at writing legalese in a foreign language.
It’s also useful to point out that this situation has never happened before. Yes the left coalition has the highest number of representatives, but there is little political room (as seen when the most radical parts of the coalition proposed not to participate directly in a would-be government) for expanding said coalition.
The constitution of the fifth republic was written in much different times, when De Gaulle wanted to avoid the fourth republic’s issues which was very parliamentary, but quite unstable. He wanted to be able to pick, and got this power when the constitution was written.
But we’ve reached this odd situation (no obvious majority because of the three-block-parliment) which was not really anticipated. So we’ll see how it goes, how long Barnier’s government will stand. As of now, the far right has given it’s blessing not to censor the government, making it a center-right-far right de facto coalition. But as of today, these are just words, so we're not sure what the exact terms of their agreement are. From what I know, the far right is not trying to participate in the current government, they would just abstain from participating in votes of no confidence, which would prevent such votes from having any effect, due to the current structure of parliament.
A party is also trying to impeach Macron which I think has never happened before in the 5th republic.
Here in [Commonwealth nation] we once had a governor general that refused a request by the Prime Minister to dissolve parliament and instead appointed someone ales as PM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%E2%80%93Byng_affair
Maybe some Commonwealth countries have made constitutional changes to avoid this from happening, but it's most certainly not universal thing that the GG has to accept the wishes of a coalition. In fact what is the mechanism for when there is not a coalition, which is common when there's a minority government in Canada? We kinda don't really do the coalition thing, we tend towards minority governments that take a "go ahead and vote no confidence, I dare you!" kinda thing.
Fascinating. TY for a fascinating slice of history.
26,000 people in Paris. That's basically nothing, the NFP militants came out but there's no popular support for the protest beyond that.
For the left to call itself "the winner" was a mistake: not only do they control 1/3 of the parlement only, but by refusing all compromise and branding Macron's party "the enemy" they were guaranteed to never be able to gather more support for their bills. It's so bad that they were seriously discussing passing some bill on pension reform with the help of the far right.
In a time when avoiding a far right government should be his first concern, I strangely mostly read about him shooting against the left, talking about how dangerous they supposedly are. Looking at it from the outside it sure looks like he branded himself the enemy.
Just like most "conservatives" around the globe, when it comes down to democracy vs corporate profits, he knows which side he's on.
Any compromise with Macron is unfortunately impossible. There is no way a single measure of the NFP would have gotten adopted if they had bent the knee
Of course there are. There's plenty of ideological overlap on public services, LGBT rights, the environment.
And, sure, the far right should never be an ally, but if the idiots are going to follow you, why tell them to fuck off?
Because when the situation was reversed and the far right voted along with Macron's party, the left cried about a supposed "alliance with the fascists".
voted against the decriminalization of homosexuality
This is outright misinformation. He voted against lowering the age of consent for gay sex with minors from 18 to 15 yo. And that was more than 40 years ago too. Homosexuality is legal in France since basically the French revolution back in the 18th century.
You’re so full of shit it’s not even funny.
Says the guy broadcasting fake news.
And, sure, the far right should never be an ally, but if the idiots are going to follow you, why tell them to fuck off?
Bought and paid for establishment politicians will lean full authoritarian before they allow leftist party at the table. They don't care about democracy.
French political deadlock: Corporate leaders 'glad' Macron keeping left from power