Rebelote. After a catastrophic Friday afternoon for the parliamentary debate on pensions – the discussions focused more on the sanctions targeting the deputy France insoumise (LFI), Thomas Portes, after his controversial tweet than on the reform project – the after noon on Monday saw new incidents. Another LFI deputy, Aurélien Saintoul, accused Olivier Dussopt, the Minister of Labour, of being “an impostor and an assassin”. Suspension of the session, reassembly of straps and finally an apology from the deputy of Hauts-de-Seine.
If, as the left often claims, she may have won the battle of opinion on pension reform – largely rejected in the polls – she is about to lose the battle for image in the hemicycle. “They are in the process of having the pension reform voted through, gets angry a socialist collaborator. No, but frankly in the context… The feedback from “circo” this weekend is terrible! It is an understatement to say that the pressure has particularly intensified on the strategy and attitude of rebellious France in the National Assembly, in particular on the part of its allies.
Change of deal
The socialists plead to go to article 7, the ecologists are more divided but are rather to accelerate too. Monday evening, the left also gave a signal by withdrawing 1,000 amendments to Article 2. Even the unions got into it. Starting with Laurent Berger (CFDT) who judges that the obstruction “is bullshit”. He pushes for an acceleration of the debates like his CGT counterpart Philippe Martinez: “I can hardly imagine deputies telling me that they would have liked to vote against, but, as the agenda could not have place, they could not decide. »
At LFI, we deny any pressure, “it’s an element of macronist language, that”, stings a deputy. The management remains convinced of the merits of its strategy of “permanently endangering” the majority, according to one of the party leaders. “We remain the masters of time, our role is to prevent the adoption of this reform, explains Paul Vannier, MP for Val-d’Oise. For me, we have the best role. In the demonstration on Saturday, we came to say thank you, hold on! I’m not being asked to speed up to get to article 7. Even if we might do it, but we’re the ones who control the tempo. »
Bluff
Amendments can, in fact, be easily withdrawn, almost with a click, at a time when they consider it appropriate to speed up the debate. “But if we want to keep this possibility, we have to keep an effect of surprise, details a rebellious thinking head. Obviously we are not going to reveal our game in advance. That’s for form. On the merits Paul Vannier wonders about the interest of a vote on article 7, which he sees as a potential reason for discouragement for mobilization in the street. “Do not count on us to give the macronists the arguments which will allow them to say that the reform has been validated by a vote”, adds the deputy for Argenteuil.
A point of view that is no longer completely unanimous among the rebellious. Raquel Garrido, for example, considers that it would be normal to go as far as the vote on Article 7 “to find out who votes what” and hold the supporters of the reform accountable. “The unions are not targeting us, they know that there is not a deputy from Nupes who will vote for the reform,” adds the deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis. She nevertheless rejects the term obstruction and assumes the substance of the strategy: “We are in an institutional context where the government can decide to crush us. So we keep control of what we can control: our right of amendment”.
sprinkler watered
This Monday, the deputies of the left took the floor on the merits with a new strategy: all the speakers asked Olivier Dussopt how many people would really be affected by the 1,200 euros minimum pension, while the government has been bogged down on the subject for several days. Without the outrageous intervention of Aurélien Saintoul, it is probably this image that would have emerged from the day. And that perhaps sums up the difficult position of the rebellious: while they were trying by all means to crack the macronists by keeping them under pressure, in the hope of a little sentence that would make the processions grow, it is the opposite that is happening.
Elisabeth Borne asked Monday evening for the withdrawal of the “obstruction” amendments and the end of “invectives”. A request that enrages the Nupes and especially LFI: they criticize the government for constraining the debates in time by using article 47.1 of the constitution which limits parliamentary discussions to 50 days or by refusing the opening of sessions on weekends -end. Especially since on Friday, the majority continued to multiply reminders of the rules and suspensions of the session before a four-hour break for the sanction of Thomas Porte. “They are the ones who make us waste debate time, accuses Benjamin Lucas. It all depends on their attitude. The rebellious may have found a better obstructionist than them: the Macronists.