FLASH
Shkruar nga Carlo Panella
The 2027 presidential elections are approaching amid parliamentary deadlock and the crisis of traditional parties. The system built by de Gaulle is now revealing all its weaknesses...
One dramatic certainty dominates the intense preparations for the upcoming French presidential election. Whoever is elected president in May 2027 will not have a parliamentary majority to support his government. This is another poisoned fruit of Emmanuel Macron's adventurous decision to dissolve the National Assembly in May 2024.
After that vote, no political camp managed to secure a majority and the sectarian stance, especially of the Socialists, hindered any attempt to create a government of national unity. As a result, four minority governments followed in twenty-two months, at a pace reminiscent of the most volatile periods of Italian politics. Of course, parliamentary work has been weak and the activity of the executives, focused almost exclusively on avoiding the adoption of a no-confidence motion, has been practically negligible.
The problem for France is that this will be the same balance, or rather parliamentary imbalance, even after the presidential elections in the spring of 2027, facing the same Parliament elected in 2024. For this reason, the new president will be forced to form a minority government again, wait until it fails to govern effectively and waste several months before having the opportunity to dissolve the National Assembly, in the hope of finally securing a parliamentary majority. This is an almost certain scenario in the event that Jordan Bardella wins the race for the Élysée Palace, while Marine Le Pen remains out of the race due to a sentence that excludes her from office.
Emmanuel Macron's decision to dissolve the National Assembly, taken in complete solitude and without even informing his Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, has separated for the first time, even for a two-year period, the vote for the president from that for the Parliament. For sixty years, these two electoral processes have run in parallel and have produced homogeneous results. In an institutional system characterized by the strong semi-presidentialism designed by Charles de Gaulle, this situation risks creating a serious bottleneck in the very concrete ability to govern France.
In theory, very much in theory, it would be possible to avoid this new period of instability in the center of the continent if the Élysée Palace were won in the second round by a centrist candidate from the current Macronist alliance, such as Édouard Philippe, Gabriel Attal or Jean Castex. However, the complete inability of the current French political class to practice the art of mediation and compromise, reinforced by six decades of rigid bipolarity, does not suggest that a long period of national unity governments or a grand coalition could be feasible.
The situation is further aggravated by the apparent crisis not only of program and strategy, but above all of leadership and even of organization that affects both the French political center and the moderate left. Emmanuel Macron's complete political inability to build over the last ten years both a strong leadership group in his political camp, as well as a successor and, above all, a party rooted in the territory, has produced a disastrous result.
Today, two of Macron's allies and former prime ministers, Édouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, are already in the race for the Élysée Palace. However, everyone knows that there is a third candidate in the pipeline, former prime minister Jean Castex, who is preparing to enter the race. Meanwhile, the centrist camp is also filled with the candidacy of the neo-Gaullist figure Bruno Retailleau. The candidates are too numerous and, moreover, too similar to each other, not to mention the weight of personal ambitions.
On the left, after finally breaking with the extremists accused of anti-Semitism of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, time is being wasted, just like in the Campo Largo model in Italy, on debating whether or not to hold early elections. This is happening without knowing or wanting to define a short program capable of attracting the electorate.
In reality, the French political scene is dominated by a complex game of grand personal ambitions, completely disconnected from a genuine political strategy.
This constitutes an ideal scenario for the far right, led effortlessly by Jordan Bardella, who is already leading in all popularity polls, leaving Marine Le Pen behind./ Adapted from "Pamphlet" by "Linkiesta"
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