After obtaining 245 seats in the legislative elections, the Executive recognizes that governing will be “complicated, it will take imagination and audacity”
Electoral hangover at the Elysée Palace. President Emmanuel Macron is wondering how to govern France with a relative majority, after the ruling party and its allies lost an absolute majority in the National Assembly in yesterday’s legislative elections. Ensemble (Together), the label with which Macron’s party and his allies presented themselves in the legislative elections, obtained 245 seats, according to official data. The macronista block did not achieve an absolute majority, for which it is necessary to have at least 289 of the 577 seats.
The union of leftist parties (Nupes) led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon obtained 137 deputies. National Regroupment, the far-right party of Marine Le Pen, gave the surprise by going from 8 deputies that they obtained in 2017 to 89 seats. And the Republicans (moderate right) and their allies got 64.
In a country as presidential as France, they are not used to so much fragmentation in the National Assembly and to having to agree to be able to govern if they do not have an absolute majority. With a government party with a relative majority and with the strongest extremist parties, many politicians and analysts wonder if the Gallic country is ungovernable. Macronists fear that “a total paralysis” of the territory. The spokeswoman for the Executive, Olivia Grégoire, acknowledged that governing will be “complicated.” “It will take imagination, daring and openness. My nightmare is that the country is blocked, “she said on France Inter radio.
One of the options that Macron could have to govern and be able to carry out his reforms would be to ally himself with the Republicans. But the Conservative Party doesn’t want to. “It is not a question of a pact or a coalition or an agreement of any kind,” Christian Jacob, president of the Republicans, said yesterday. The Conservative Party will therefore remain in opposition.
After the poor results of The Republic on the Move in the legislative elections, calls for the resignation of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, appointed a month ago by Macron in the post, multiplied, from the left to the extreme right. “Mrs. Borne must leave,” stressed the deputy for Nupes, Manuel Bompard. Otherwise, La Francia Insumisa threatens to present a motion of censure on July 5, the date on which Borne is scheduled to make her general policy speech in the National Assembly.
First Opposition Force
Both the New Popular, Ecological and Social Union (Nupes) and the National Regrouping both claimed yesterday to be the leading opposition force. Both demanded for themselves the coveted presidency of the Finance Commission of the National Assembly. Of the 137 seats in Nupes, there will be 12 communist deputies, 28 socialists, 23 environmentalists and 74 from La Francia Insumisa. The National Regrouping group will have 89 deputies, more than La Francia Insumisa if it forms a parliamentary group alone.
Before the entry with force of the extreme right in the National Assembly, Mélenchon proposed yesterday that Nupes be constituted in a single parliamentary group in the lower house of Parliament. But the proposal was rejected by the rest of the leftist parties.
The creation of a single Nupes parliamentary group was not, in principle, foreseen in the agreements of this alliance of four left-wing parties: La France Insumisa, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and Europe Ecology-The Greens (EE-LV) . What was agreed upon was that each party would have its own parliamentary group and that there would be an unofficial ‘intergroup’ to coordinate with each other.
After the legislative elections, Mélenchon will not be prime minister, as he dreamed before the elections. The Nupes failed to obtain the majority in the National Assembly, necessary to force a government of cohabitation. He will not be a deputy either, since the veteran politician did not present himself this time as a candidate in the legislative elections. But the leader of Nupes still does not think about retiring. “He did not leave political life, he did not stop fighting,” Mélenchon announced.
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