We had planned everything for this day, not that it would be hit by a dramatic news item, with the knife attack in Annecy. Suddenly, in the middle of the battle on the repeal of the postponement of the retirement age to 64 years proposed by the group Freedom, independent, overseas and territories (Liot), the Assembly is silent. A silence so astonishing, so unusual, in this usually so tumultuous Hémycle. Moment of schizophrenia quite symbolic of a morning of debates where the oppositions finally failed to obtain a vote on the famous question of 64 years.
While the raison d’être of the Liot bill was deleted in committee last week, and all the reinstatement amendments were declared – questionably – inadmissible, the debate boils down to a ping-pong of lessons. of democracy. On the one hand, the opposition denounced “a dizzying day for the Republic”, in the words of the communist Pierre Dharréville; a “political regime in a state of brain death”, for the rebellious Clémentine Autain. All of them denounce not only an application of the rules of the Assembly and the Constitution contrary to all case law, but also the global “coup de force” represented by the government’s method to push through its reform from the start.
The blocked opposition
Opposite, the supporters of the government affirm loud and clear that on the contrary, democracy is saved by its application – sometimes literal, sometimes limited, and in any case unprecedented – of the regulations. “We cannot make fun of the National Assembly as you do, launches Éric Woerth (Renaissance). Constitutional heckling, that is the real attack on democracy. »
A year after legislative elections with a singular result, without an absolute majority, and by far, this day then appears as a symbol of what the legislature has been so far. A year “as if”. Taking advantage of being, in fact, in the majority, the oppositions act “as if” the government could fall every three days. While Elisabeth Borne did not dare to ask for the confidence of the Assembly after her declaration of general policy, she nevertheless accumulated the “hollow” victories during the numerous motions of censure, all of which were rejected. The oppositions have also often broken their teeth during their days of initiatives (the “parliamentary niches”) in the face of macronists who have discovered good qualities of obstructors, too.
The government keeps up appearances
Faced with an institution that they consider “locked”, as the socialist Arthur Delaporte said recently, the oppositions therefore find themselves stuck, with few means of action “inside”. And in an attempt to challenge public opinion on the executive’s way of governing, they are forced to shout ever louder, perhaps until they become inaudible. “But you have gone mad! “Launches the president of the Liot group, Bertrand Pancher, faced with the refusal of the majority to let the vote take place. “This situation cannot last four more years,” says Mathilde Panot, the president of the rebellious group, who still has dissolution in her sights. For now it is, at best, a gamble.
And the government? For his part, he draws no conclusion from the result of the legislative elections, and acts “as if” he still had an absolute majority. He uses all the stratagems of “rationalized parliamentarianism” established by the Fifth Republic to, at all costs, avoid any defeat – and ultimately any compromise – even in the majority. Jean-René Cazeneuve (RE) euphemistically praises “robust institutions”. Almost too much, one would be tempted to say, when they make it possible to override the lack of majority not only in the country, but in the Assembly, as Elisabeth Borne had conceded after 49.3 on pensions.
Disenchanted
It’s true, the government has passed more than twenty texts without 49.3. But with what major compromises? For several weeks, when we ask the parliamentarians of the majority on what they feel they have yielded since the beginning of the mandate, they almost take the position of Rodin’s Thinker. Then, after a few moments’ silence, they are forced to concede, a bit mezzo voce, that no, no, so far, they have run their program well. One exception: the deal between LR and macronie last summer, the former wanting a discount of 40 cents on a liter of fuel, the latter 20 cents, both agreeing on 30 cents. Packed, it is weighed.
Last July, the president of the socialist group in the National Assembly, Boris Vallaud, considered in our columns that the new composition of the lower house established a “de facto parliamentarianism”. This Thursday, in his speech, the same Boris Vallaud believed that the macronie had “failed to invent this de facto parliamentarism”. The disenchantment is clear. In just one year, the Assembly that has been the most representative of the major political currents in the country since 1958 has turned into the most disconnected chamber in the country. A gap not new but now gaping. And, perhaps, dangerous.