Twenty years after the referendum, why is the five-year term contested?

Lionel Jospin and Jacques Chirac, during the third cohabitation.

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• Twenty years ago, on September 24, the French chose to reduce the presidential term from seven to five years.

• Seen as a measure of modernization of political life in the face of an archaic seven-year term, the measure has today many opponents.

• In question, the marginalization of the National Assembly and the hyper presidentialization of the Fifth Republic induced by the five-year term but not only, according to Mathieu Gallard.

“20 years and not all his teeth”, said Friday morning, the political columnist of France Culture, Frédéric Says, to celebrate the anniversary of the referendum on the five-year term.

On September 24, 2000, 73% of the French and French (well, with 70% abstention) decided to reduce the presidential mandate from seven to five years.

The consensus seems less clear two decades later when the concordance between presidential election and legislative elections seems to provoke, or aggravate, the democratic crisis, with a parliament reduced to the rank of utilities.

The director of studies at Ipsos, Mathieu Gallard, interviewed by

, partially confirms the finding and suggests some ways out of the impasse.

What is the problem with the five-year term?

In itself, the five-year term was not necessarily the problem.

The problem is to have coupled five years and inversion of the electoral calendar in 2002 (Editor's note: the presidential and legislative elections in the same year and in that order, whereas the legislative elections traditionally took place in March).

With the ripple effect of the election of the President, there is now a systematic concordance between the political color of the President and the political color of the National Assembly.

The institutional consequences are that the National Assembly becomes a chamber for recording the decisions of the President, that one wonders what is the role of the Prime Minister in the institutional architecture.

Previously, there were these periods of cohabitation (Editor's note: when the parliamentary majority is opposed to the President of the Republic) which gave weight to the National Assembly compared to the President, who gave the Prime Minister more importance.

Even in a period of concordance there was still in people's minds this possibility that the Prime Minister would regain power against the President.

Now it is quite a long way off and it has deleterious consequences.

What deleterious consequences?

The main current problem in France is public mistrust of its political leaders and systematic mistrust of the President of the Republic very quickly after his election.

This is linked to the fact that the presidential election is considered the most important election, while the legislative elections are completely devalued.

This presidentialization of the system, this personalization, it has deleterious effects because people have disproportionate expectations vis-à-vis the President of the Republic, which he obviously cannot fulfill during his five-year term.

In 2000, some of the five-year supporters said they did not want a “dry” five-year term, that is to say without other institutional reforms.

There was none.

What would it take to reduce the "deleterious effects" of the five-year term?

One of the possibilities is to abolish the presidential election and have him elected by Parliament or return to the Constitution of 1958, that seems very unlikely to me because the French are largely attached to this election and that would be seen as a step backwards. democracy, which it would probably be somewhere.

On the other hand, we can think about electing the National Assembly in a different way.

With proportionality, and not just “one dose”.

It would take 50-60% of members elected by proportional representation, or even all.

What would that change?

De facto, the President of the Republic would be obliged to rely on parliamentary coalitions in the National Assembly.

It would have the advantage for him that he would rely on a broader electoral base.

This is one of the factors that explains why Macron was so unpopular compared to Merkel in Germany or even Conte in Italy.

In Italy for example, where there is also a lot of mistrust vis-à-vis the political and long-standing elites, Giuseppe Conte relies on a much larger electoral coalition, made up of two important parties which represented 40 to 45% voting intentions.

In fact, it changed everything in terms of political confidence.

And then also, to organize legislative the same day as the presidential one would allow that the legislative ones are no longer simply a validation of the presidential one.

In terms of form, this 2000 referendum is not the last, but it is the last where the yes has won.

Why do we no longer use this instrument?

French political leaders are absolutely convinced that voters do not answer the question put to them.

Which is not necessarily true.

We saw it with the five-year term, we have just seen it in Italy where people have visibly answered the question they were asked (Editor's note: the reduction in the number of parliamentarians, approved to 70%) and not on their opinion vis-à-vis the government, if that had been the case it might have gone differently.

But the Italians are not fundamentally different from the French, I believe.

This misinterpretation of the behavior of French voters gives rise to this rejection of the referendum.

During the period of “yellow vests”, we clearly saw the reluctance of part of the French political elites to move towards this more direct type of democracy.

So the problem is both a mistrust of the voters towards the elites and the mistrust of the elites towards the voters?

It is completely that.

On the one hand, we have voters who wish to have more means to express themselves, while very much appreciating the presidential election which has somewhat the opposite effect.

So there is a paradox.

And then there is undoubtedly a mistrust of the elites vis-à-vis the French.

It is an idea which consists in saying that if we propose to the French a project, even consensual in society, will they vote in a "reasonable way"?

The two visions collide a bit at the moment, which explains this democratic crisis that we have been experiencing for several years.

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