Almost two months after the New Popular Front won France’s parliamentary elections, President Emmanuel Macron has unveiled a new tactic in his effort to delay allowing the left-wing coalition to form a government: joining forces with the fascists.
The snap elections of early July put the NPF—an alliance of the French Communist Party (PCF), La France Insoumise (France Unbowed, or LFI, the party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon), the center-left Socialist Party (PS), and Les Écologistes (a green environmentalist party)—in first place.
Together, they beat the polls and knocked the National Rally of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella into third place. Macron’s group, Ensemble/Renaissance, came up the middle and secured second.
Coming in first gives the NPF the legal right to nominate a prime minister and cabinet. Openly defying the will of French voters, however, Macron has spent weeks peddling one excuse after another to delay appointing Lucie Castets, the NPF’s choice for prime minister.
In the initial days following the election, Macron re-installed his own premier, Gabriel Attal, in a supposedly “temporary” capacity. Backed by French capitalists and big business, the president hoped that kicking the can down the road would buy enough time for the left-wing parties’ unity to unravel.
When that didn’t work, he used the Paris Olympics as his next justification, claiming the Games required national unity rather than political division. He pledged to appoint a new government once the athletes of the world had gone home.
Two weeks after the closing ceremony, however, Attal is still prime minister and Macron continues to blockade the left’s path to power.
Spokespersons for the Elysée Palace, Macron’s official residence, offered a new story on Monday. On behalf of Macron, a statement was issued saying that while discussions with the various parties were “fair, sincere, and useful,” a government formed by the NPF would “immediately have a majority of more than 350 MPs against it, effectively preventing it from acting.”
Therefore, the president said, “The institutional stability of our country means that this option should not be pursued.”
While trying to paint an image of the NPF lacking popular support, what Macron was really admitting was that he had put his party’s members of parliament into an alliance with the fascists.
In the 577-member National Assembly, the only way to get “a majority of 350 MPs against” the NPF is to add Macron’s 159 seats with the fascists’ 142 and the conservative Les Republicains party’s 61—for a total of 362.
Macron didn’t openly admit he’s working with the right wing, but the math provided by his own office shows he’s joined forces with Le Pen.
This latest development essentially proves the allegation made in late July by French journalist Pauline Bock of the outlet Arrêt sur images that Macron was hoping the National Rally party would actually win the elections.
Bock reported that it was an open secret among the French political elite that Macron wanted to appoint Le Pen’s deputy, Bardella, as prime minister rather than let the NPF govern.
It was part of a scheme to win re-election for his own centrist Renaissance party in the next presidential vote. Allegedly, Macron wanted to let the French people directly feel the pain of National Rally’s extremist policies for three years so that they would come running to his party, and not the left, as their savior.
The president’s Machiavellian maneuvering and cynical disdain for democracy, critics say, is evidence of political centrists’ unreliability when it comes to fighting fascism. Rather than working with the left to keep the anti-immigrant and anti-democratic National Rally from seizing control, Macron is instead opening the door for them.
Some of Macron’s opponents point out the similarities of France’s current crisis to Germany’s in the 1930s when centrists and conservatives worked to help Hitler into power rather than let labor-backed parties like the Social Democrats and Communists into government.
The president’s efforts to block the left and working class-supported parties comes as no surprise, however. Macron is a former investment banker who worked for Rothschild & Cie Banque before being plucked by former President François Hollande to become finance minister ten years ago.
In that role and later as president, he pursued policies that privatized or deregulated major sections of the French economy, made layoffs easier, raised the retirement age for workers, and pursued other capitalist class priorities.
Macron’s refusal Monday to appoint an NPF government—which is his constitutional responsibility—and his alliance with the far-right has earned him a threat of possible impeachment.
“The popular and political response” to Macron’s disregard for the people “must be swift and firm,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise, announced. His party is the largest in the NPF coalition.
“The president of the republic does not recognize the result of universal suffrage, which placed the New Popular Front at the top of the polls,” the party said in a statement. “He refuses to appoint Lucie Castets as prime minister. Under these conditions, the motion of impeachment will be presented by LFI MPs. Any proposal for a prime minister other than Lucie Castets will be subject to a motion of censure.”
Fabien Roussel, secretary of the Communist Party, called on the French people to “mobilize wherever they are,” in city centers and rural areas alike.
Trashing Macron’s claim that an NPF government would create instability, Roussel responded: “We will build a government with others…build majorities on each law. We work in a spirit of openness, construction, and compromise.
“We will fight,” the Communist leader concluded, “I am making an appeal to the people: Mobilize now.”
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