After winning 245 seats in parliamentary elections, the executive recognizes that governing “will be complicated, it will take imagination and audacity”
Election hangover in the Elysée Palace. President Emmanuel Macron is questioning how to rule France with a relative majority after the ruling party and its allies lost an absolute majority in the National Assembly yesterday in parliamentary elections. Ensemble (Together), the label under which Macron’s party and its allies presented themselves in the parliamentary elections, won 245 seats, according to official data. The Macronista bloc did not win an absolute majority, requiring at least 289 of the 577 seats.
The left-wing trade union (Nupes) led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon had 137 delegates. National Regroupment, Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, provided the surprise by going from 8 deputies they won in 2017 to 89 seats. And the Republicans (moderate right) and their allies got 64.
In a country as presidential as France, they are not used to so much fragmentation in the National Assembly and having to agree to rule if they don’t have an absolute majority. With a ruling party with a relative majority and with the strongest extremist parties, many politicians and analysts wonder whether the Gallic country is ungovernable. Macronists fear “total paralysis” of the territory. The Executive’s spokeswoman, Olivia Grégoire, acknowledged that governing will be “complicated”. “It takes imagination, daring and openness. My nightmare is that the country is blocked,” he told France Inter radio.
One of the options Macron might have to rule and push through his reforms would be to join the Republicans. But the Conservative Party doesn’t want that. “It’s not a matter of a pact or a coalition or an agreement of any kind,” Republican president Christian Jacob said yesterday. The Conservative Party thus remains in opposition.
Following The Republic on the Move’s poor results in parliamentary elections, calls for the resignation of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, appointed by Macron to the post a month ago, are multiplied from left to far right. “Mrs Borne must leave,” emphasized Nupes’ deputy Manuel Bompard. Otherwise, La Francia Insumisa threatens a vote of censure on July 5, the date when Borne will deliver his general policy speech in the National Assembly.
Both the New Popular, Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) and the National Realignment both claimed to be the leading opposition force yesterday. Both claimed for themselves the coveted chairmanship of the National Assembly’s finance committee. Of the 137 seats in Nupes, 12 will be communist deputies, 28 socialists, 23 environmentalists and 74 from La Francia Insumisa. The National Regrouping Group will have 89 deputies, more than La Francia Insumisa if it only forms a parliamentary group.
Before the far right forcibly entered the National Assembly, Mélenchon yesterday proposed to form Nupes into one parliamentary group in the House of Representatives. But the proposal was rejected by the rest of the left-wing parties.
The creation of a single Nupes parliamentary faction was in principle not foreseen in the agreements of this alliance of four left-wing parties: La France Insumisa, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and Europe Ecology-The Greens (EE-LV) . It was agreed that each party would have its own faction and that there would be an unofficial ‘inter faction’ to coordinate with each other.
After the parliamentary elections, Mélenchon will not become prime minister, as he had dreamed before the elections. The Nupes failed to gain a majority in the National Assembly, which was necessary to enforce a government of cohabitation. He will also not be a deputy, as the former politician did not run as a candidate in the parliamentary elections this time. But the Nupes leader is still not thinking about his retirement. “I’m not leaving political life, I’m not stopping the fight,” Mélenchon announced.
Source: La Verdad
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