Emmanuel Macron, who again refused on Tuesday to seize a hand extended by the unions, seems to isolate himself more and more, protected by the institutions of the Fifth Republic which also contribute to locking him up in a tete-a- head with the anger of the street.
The inter-union opposed to the pension reform called on the executive to set up a "mediation" to find a way out of the crisis.
"No need for mediation," swept government spokesman Olivier Véran after a Council of Ministers chaired by the Head of State.
As for the request to put the text on "pause", formulated by the secretary general of the CFDT Laurent Berger, it remains rejected in high places.
The dialogue of the deaf therefore continues: the president assures to reach out to the unions, but on all subjects except retirement at 64, the suspension of which is however their prerequisite.
"If we go on a break of a month and a half and a mediation, in the end we do not pass the reform", deciphers a government source.
The executive has therefore chosen to "turn around" while waiting for the Constitutional Council to render its decision on the reform, within less than a month, and in the hope that the demonstrations will subside, explains this source. .
If the Head of State can allow himself to "turn his back", it is because he is largely protected, in France, by the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, which grants him powers often considered superior to those of the President of the United States.
This "all-powerful presidency" is "the closest thing to an elected dictator in the developed world", mocked this weekend Simon Kuper, columnist at the Financial Times, a daily newspaper in a country, the United United, where two Prime Ministers were swept away in less than four months by a succession of controversies.
Nothing like that in France.
The so-called "semi-presidential" regime provides that the Prime Minister is responsible to Parliament, unlike the President.
However, "in practice, the president is the real chief executive", notes Camille Bedock, researcher at Sciences-Po Bordeaux. "We are in a situation where the person who runs the country is politically irresponsible."
Emmanuel Macron did not say anything else by affirming, at the time of opting for the adoption of his reform without a vote in Parliament thanks to article 49.3 of the Constitution, that he was not "the one who risks his place or his seat".
But thus protected, he also tends to isolate himself.
In recent months, he has rarely left 55, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Some people around him describe "friends" who don't dare tell him to his face when he's on the wrong track.
And cracks are appearing in his camp: the MoDem, his first ally, on Tuesday gave his support to the mediation demanded by the unions but rejected by Macronie.
An impression of isolation that the oppositions hasten to amplify, like the boss of the socialists Olivier Faure who attacks "a completely deaf and blind president who does not understand his country".
But this criticism surprisingly echoes what Emmanuel Macron, then candidate for the Elysée Palace, denounced in his book "Revolution" before the 2017 presidential election.
"What fuels the anger or rejection of our fellow citizens is the certainty that power is in the hands of leaders who no longer look like them, no longer understand them," he said, challenging the reading that sees in the institutions the source of France's ills.
Him president, he promised, would not impose anything without "convincing". In 2023, he, president, maintains at all costs a reform rejected by an overwhelming majority of French people, after having used a whole series of constitutional tools at his disposal to impose it.
"Nothing obliges the president in power to have such a vertical vision of his role", considers however the political scientist Camille Bedock, evoking "a practice" of the institutions "which has been confirmed year after year" and to which Emmanuel Macron has contributed its stone with its "very conflicting relationship with intermediary bodies, whether unions or other powers such as Parliament".
For her, this leads to a "blockage". Especially since the executive "has not taken the measure" of the political landscape resulting from the legislative elections, with "three totally irreconcilable poles", and continues to "govern as if it still had an absolute majority".
As a result, says the researcher, the situation degenerates into "a confrontation between power and the street, because the intermediary bodies have not really been able to play their role" and there is "no longer an arena for a channeled confrontation".
03/28/2023 18:26:34 - Paris (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
