Macron locks himself in his face-to-face with the street

The inter-union opposed to the pension reform called on the executive to set up a "mediation" to find a way out of the crisis.

"No need for mediation," swept government spokesman Olivier Véran at the end of a Council of Ministers chaired by the head of state.

As for the request to put the text on "pause", formulated by the secretary general of the CFDT Laurent Berger, it remains rejected in high places.

The dialogue of the deaf therefore continues: the president assures to reach out to the unions, but on all subjects except retirement at 64, whose suspension is nevertheless their prerequisite.

Demonstration against the pension reform on March 28, 2023 in Rennes © JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER / AFP

'Dictator elected'

"If we go on a break of a month and a half and mediation, in the end we do not pass the reform," decrypts a government source.

The executive has therefore chosen to "make the round" while waiting for the Constitutional Council to render its decision on the reform, in less than a month, and in the hope that the demonstrations subside, explains this source.

If the head of state can afford to "make the round", it is because he is largely protected, in France, by the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, which gives him powers often considered superior to those of the president of the United States.

This "all-powerful presidency" is "the closest thing to an elected dictator in the developed world," mocked this weekend Simon Kuper, columnist for the Financial Times, daily of a country, the United Kingdom, where two prime ministers have been swept away in less than four months by a succession of controversies.

Nothing like this in France.

The so-called "semi-presidential" regime provides that the Prime Minister is responsible to Parliament, unlike the President.

Demonstration against the pension reform on March 28, 2023 in Marseille © NICOLAS TUCAT / AFP

However, "in practice, it is the president who is the real head of the executive," says Camille Bedock, a researcher at Sciences-Po Bordeaux. "We are in a situation where the person who runs the country is politically irresponsible."

Emmanuel Macron did not say anything else by affirming, at the time of opting for the adoption of his reform without a vote in Parliament thanks to Article 49.3 of the Constitution, that he was not "the one who risks his place or his seat".

Crack

But thus protected, it also tends to isolate itself.

In recent months, he rarely leaves 55, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Some in his entourage describe "friends" who do not dare to tell him to his face when he is wrong.

And cracks appear in his camp: the MoDem, his first ally, gave Tuesday his support to the mediation demanded by the unions but rejected by Macronia.

An impression of isolation that the oppositions are quick to amplify, like the boss of the socialists Olivier Faure who attacks "a completely deaf and blind president who does not understand his country".

President Emmanuel Macron on March 24, 2023 at the Elysee Palace in Paris © Yoan VALAT / POOL / AFP / Archives

But this criticism surprisingly echoes what Emmanuel Macron, then candidate for the Elysee, denounced in his book "Revolution" before the presidential election of 2017.

"What fuels the anger or rejection of our fellow citizens is the certainty that power is in the hands of leaders who no longer look like them, no longer understand them," he said, contesting the reading that sees in the institutions the source of the ills of the France.

He was president, he promised, would not impose anything without "convincing". In 2023, he maintains at all costs a reform rejected by an overwhelming majority of French, after having used a whole series of constitutional tools at his disposal to impose it.

"Nothing obliges the president in power to have such a vertical vision of his role," says political scientist Camille Bedock, evoking "a practice" of institutions "which has been confirmed year after year" and to which Emmanuel Macron has contributed with his "very conflictual relationship with intermediate bodies, whether unions or other powers such as Parliament".

For her, this leads to a "blockage". Especially since the executive "has not taken the measure" of the political landscape resulting from the legislative elections, with "three totally irreconcilable poles", and continues to "govern as if it still had an absolute majority".

As a result, says the researcher, the situation degenerates into "a confrontation between power and the street, because the intermediate bodies have not really been able to play their role" and there is "no longer an arena for a channeled confrontation".

© 2023 AFP