In the National Assembly,
The mountain Liot will have finally given birth to a mouse. Announced for long weeks as the decisive day in the battle over pension reform, the parliamentary niche of the Freedoms, Independents, Overseas and Territories (Liot) group has turned into a fleeting last stand. After a few scuffles in the Hemicycle, this Thursday morning, the small parliamentary group finally withdrew its bill, which aimed to repeal the government text, after it was emptied of its substance by the macronists. A look back at a day of tension, also marked by controversy over the knife attack on children in Annecy.
Yaël Braun-Pivet under siege
Shortly before 9 o’clock, she crosses the room of the Four Columns like a specter fleeing microphones and cameras. By declaring “inadmissible”, the day before, (almost) all of the opposition amendments, Yaël Braun-Pivet changed the course of the day. His decision to invoke Article 40 dashed hopes of a vote on raising the legal age to 64. Throughout the morning, the President of the National Assembly is therefore the main punching bag of the oppositions. “The choice you have made to resort to Article 40 is a terrible blow to our parliamentary democracy”, launches the Communist deputy André Chassaigne, while his colleagues settle in the Hemicycle. “It was not a question of respecting the Constitution, but of political and partisan decisions aimed, on the order of the executive, to exclude any possibility for the Assembly to vote”, abounds in the wake of Eric Coquerel, the LFI president of the Finance Committee. The elected Liot Benjamin Saint-Huile is more serious: “You are in a position to weaken a part of our Republic”.
On her perch, the interested party grimaces. She then rolls her eyes when, in this deleterious climate, Clémentine Autaine forgets to greet her before speaking. “Me, I was taught to say hello, but obviously, this is not the case for everyone…”, she sighs. The speeches are linked without a single one failing to scratch the macronist. The ecologist Sandrine Rousseau mocks “the servility of a perch” towards Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen judges her “responsible” for “a major democratic rupture”.
A minute of silence
Annoyed, Yaël Braun-Pivet recalls that parliamentarians cannot create charges that aggravate public finances. “The Constitution, nothing but the Constitution, the rules, nothing but the rules, that’s my role,” she said. But she sometimes seems quite alone, up there, and waits long minutes for the first supporters of the presidential camp to come. “I consider that Madam President has completely respected her role”, slips Jean-Paul Mattei, the president of the MoDem group. “I was quite shocked to see earlier that the whole Hemicycle did not get up when the President entered the Hemicycle”, adds Laurent Marcangeli (Horizons), who denounces “the lack of respect shown by the deputies of the Nupes”. Under the blows, the macronists turn their backs. And reply: “You only want to overturn the table and undermine our institutions”, whistles the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt.
A drama then transforms the atmosphere. The rebellious Mathilde Panot speaks at the microphone of the knife attack that left six injured, including four young children, a few hours earlier on the shores of Lake Annecy. MPs scan their phones. In tribute to the victims, a minute of silence is pronounced. The respite is brief. Divisions crush national cohesion. The president of the Renaissance group, Aurore Bergé, is going to express her anger in front of the cameras. “To be in the Chamber at the moment with a kind of battle of rag pickers on the admissibility or not of amendments seems to us to be totally out of step with the dread that overwhelms our country when children are attacked”.
Shortened debate, motion of censure to come
The release aroused criticism, from La France insoumise to the National Rally. “Absolutely odious instrumentalization” for Manuel Bompard (LFI). “Total indecency”, for Caroline Parmentier (RN). What to inflame the debates again in session? No, because the boss of the Liot group, Bertrand Pancher, is whistling the end of recess. “There is nothing left in the text, except obviously the amendments of the presidential minority. In responsibility, we have decided to withdraw our text”. Annoyed, the opposition is forced to concede defeat. In the aftermath of a declining national mobilization against the pension reform, the sequence seems about to end, and offer some air to the executive.
It was without counting the Nupes, which announces in the afternooni the filing of a new motion of censure against the government. But she does not seem able to gather as many voices as that which made Elisabeth Borne waver last March. The right does not want it and even the elected Liot, reassembled like pendulums, hesitate on the way forward. This motion should be considered by the Assembly early next week.