Left lawmakers in France Friday slammed the decision by the country’s president not to appoint a new prime minister until after the Olympic Games. President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday he will maintain the caretaker government, led by his business-centered coalition, through the Olympics to avoid “disorder.”
Macron brushed aside a prime minister nomination by the left-wing New Popular Front (NPF), which won most seats at this month’s National Assembly elections. The NPF nominated Paris-based civil servant Lucie Castets as its choice for prime minister.
Castets said: “I am ready, we are ready, I ask the president of the republic to take his responsibilities and appoint me prime minister.”
She declared a government headed by herself would rely on “the program of the NPF as our basis.” She pledged to work hard to win it, saying, “It will be a matter of convincing the assembly to have its measures adopted.”
But soon after the nomination, Macron made his announcement during a TV interview. He told the France 2 network that the current government, which resigned last week to take on a purely caretaker role, would “handle current affairs during the Olympics,” which are being staged in Paris and elsewhere in France through August 11.
Macron said, “I have chosen stability” to safeguard the Games.
L’Humanité, the newspaper of the French Communist Party (PCF), which is a part of the NPF coalition, has been warning ever since the election earlier this month that Macron is maneuvering to “hijack the results.” It characterized the Olympics stability pretext just another tactic.
The Popular Front’s program of lowering the retirement age, raising wages, and introducing price controls to battle inflation is in jeopardy, the paper reported, because of Macron’s undemocratic delays.
The Communist group in the Senate submitted a proposal Friday for immediate legislative action to force Macron to appoint a new prime minister within eight days. The PCF lawmakers say the president’s re-appointment of his own government—which lost the elections—as a “caretaker” administration is unconstitutional.
The leader of the left-wing France Unbowed party, Jean-Luc Melenchon, said: “The president refuses the result of the election and wants to forcefully impose his new Republican Front on us and force us to renounce our program to form an alliance with him.”
He added: “There is no question. Respect the vote of the French. He must submit or resign!”
Secretary-general of the Greens, Marine Tondelier, told the president “to get out of denial.”
This article features reporting from Morning Star and L’Humanité.
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