Mélenchon: Macron Is Wrong. France’s Election Had a Winner.
Mélenchon: Macron Is Wrong. France’s Election Had a Winner.
Emmanuel Macron claims that “nobody” won the French election. In an op-ed, Jean-Luc Mélenchon insists that the Left came first — and has the right to govern. Jean-Luc Mélenchon talking to the media, on July 10, 2024 in Brussels, Belgium. (Thierry Monasse / Getty Images) France’s election runoffs on Sunday were expected to produce a victory for Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National — but the winner in the end was the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire. It took 182 seats, as against 168 for Emmanuel Macron’s coalition and 143 for Le Pen’s party and allies. Macron had called the snap election in June in a bid for “clarification,” only to lose seventy-seven seats. Yet in a letter to the French regional press on Wednesday he claimed that “no one” had won. He now seeks to keep his allies in power despite their electoral loss, perhaps through deals with smaller parties of center left and center right. In an op-ed for his blog, here in English translation, France Insoumise founder Jean-Luc Mélenchon hailed the republican front that had kept out the far right, but pushes back against the president’s attempts to deny the Nouveau Front Populaire its chance to form a government. This isn’t an event just like any other. No one committed to our Republic can minimize its political significance — or the extremely serious moment we’re in. In a letter to the French people, the president of the Republic claims that “nobody won the election.” This is not true. Everyone knows that. The Nouveau Front Populaire came out on top in the election — and it is up to it to form the next government. In all the world’s democracies, this is how elections decide who the government will be, whether or not it has an absolute majority of MPs. After the 2022 election, Emmanuel Macron used this rule to appoint a prime minister from a presidential coalition that did not have an absolute majority in the National Assembly. This coalition was even dubbed the “presidential majority,” even though it did not have a majority of MPs. This time, the coalition of parties supporting Macron came second. The president cannot recommend the formation of a new coalition until he has seen how things stand with the coalition that actually came first. To act as the president is doing is, therefore, a strong-arming of the situation, an abuse of power. It is also an act of violence against the National Assembly itself. Indeed, Macron is asking for the election [by MPs] of the president of the National Assembly to define the contours of a new governmental majority, notwithstanding the results of the vote by the whole electorate. But that isn’t at all what the election for the president of the Assembly is about. Moreover, can the president of the Republic really be unaware that parliamentary groups can’t be formed without declaring whether they belong to the majority or the opposition? This is impossible if the government “majority” remains unknown. So, these things all go together, and all have one acceptable meaning: the same one contained in the sentence where the president asserts that “nobody won.” He is thus denying the result of the vote on Sunday, July 7. Who could accept this — and endorse such a travesty? And that’s not all. The president is also violating the political meaning of what happened between the two rounds of the parliamentary election. He is turning the “republican front” [against Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National] into a political alliance that is supposed to produce a government or a majority in parliament. But there can be no question of that. The so-called “front” is not a political alliance. It never has been. In fact, its deepest meaning is that it goes beyond parties and partisan boundaries to serve a higher common interest. It is a cordon sanitaire against a party hostile to the republican nature of the state, such as the Rassemblement National, coming to power, for all the reasons expressed a thousand times on the subject. As far as France Insoumise is concerned, I made public our decision to withdraw our third-place candidates [from runoff races] when the Rassemblement National was in first place fifteen minutes after the first-round exit poll, without first needing any negotiations and without any request for quid pro quos. The attempt to transform a cordon sanitaire into a political alliance is a baseless abuse of political power. It comes on top of the one that denies the election result and the victory of the Nouveau Front Populaire. The two form an unacceptable whole. The outcome of the July 7 election guaranteed the defeat of the Rassemblement National thanks to the victory of the Nouveau Front Populaire. This result must now be extended by defeating Macron’s power grab. He wants to keep the power that the French voters took away from him. There can be no question of accepting this kind of return to the royal veto against a vote by the electorate. There can be no question of allowing the return of unscrupulous combinations and secret plots to impose themselves through a coalition different to the one chosen by the popular vote! What is unacceptable must not be accepted. And this must be translated into concrete action, until the president respects the decision made through universal suffrage.
https://jacobin.com/2024/07/melenchon-macron-france-left-winner/
Emmanuel Macron claims that “nobody” won the French election. In an op-ed, Jean-Luc Mélenchon insists that the Left came first — and has the right to govern. Jean-Luc Mélenchon talking to the media, on July 10, 2024 in Brussels, Belgium. (Thierry Monasse / Getty Images) France’s election runoffs on Sunday were expected to produce a victory for Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National — but the winner in the end was the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire. It took 182 seats, as against 168 for Emmanuel Macron’s coalition and 143 for Le Pen’s party and allies. Macron had called the snap election in June in a bid for “clarification,” only to lose seventy-seven seats. Yet in a letter to the French regional press on Wednesday he claimed that “no one” had won. He now seeks to keep his allies in power despite their electoral loss, perhaps through deals with smaller parties of center left and center right. In an op-ed for his blog, here in English translation, France Insoumise founder Jean-Luc Mélenchon hailed the republican front that had kept out the far right, but pushes back against the president’s attempts to deny the Nouveau Front Populaire its chance to form a government. This isn’t an event just like any other. No one committed to our Republic can minimize its political significance — or the extremely serious moment we’re in. In a letter to the French people, the president of the Republic claims that “nobody won the election.” This is not true. Everyone knows that. The Nouveau Front Populaire came out on top in the election — and it is up to it to form the next government. In all the world’s democracies, this is how elections decide who the government will be, whether or not it has an absolute majority of MPs. After the 2022 election, Emmanuel Macron used this rule to appoint a prime minister from a presidential coalition that did not have an absolute majority in the National Assembly. This coalition was even dubbed the “presidential majority,” even though it did not have a majority of MPs. This time, the coalition of parties supporting Macron came second. The president cannot recommend the formation of a new coalition until he has seen how things stand with the coalition that actually came first. To act as the president is doing is, therefore, a strong-arming of the situation, an abuse of power. It is also an act of violence against the National Assembly itself. Indeed, Macron is asking for the election [by MPs] of the president of the National Assembly to define the contours of a new governmental majority, notwithstanding the results of the vote by the whole electorate. But that isn’t at all what the election for the president of the Assembly is about. Moreover, can the president of the Republic really be unaware that parliamentary groups can’t be formed without declaring whether they belong to the majority or the opposition? This is impossible if the government “majority” remains unknown. So, these things all go together, and all have one acceptable meaning: the same one contained in the sentence where the president asserts that “nobody won.” He is thus denying the result of the vote on Sunday, July 7. Who could accept this — and endorse such a travesty? And that’s not all. The president is also violating the political meaning of what happened between the two rounds of the parliamentary election. He is turning the “republican front” [against Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National] into a political alliance that is supposed to produce a government or a majority in parliament. But there can be no question of that. The so-called “front” is not a political alliance. It never has been. In fact, its deepest meaning is that it goes beyond parties and partisan boundaries to serve a higher common interest. It is a cordon sanitaire against a party hostile to the republican nature of the state, such as the Rassemblement National, coming to power, for all the reasons expressed a thousand times on the subject. As far as France Insoumise is concerned, I made public our decision to withdraw our third-place candidates [from runoff races] when the Rassemblement National was in first place fifteen minutes after the first-round exit poll, without first needing any negotiations and without any request for quid pro quos. The attempt to transform a cordon sanitaire into a political alliance is a baseless abuse of political power. It comes on top of the one that denies the election result and the victory of the Nouveau Front Populaire. The two form an unacceptable whole. The outcome of the July 7 election guaranteed the defeat of the Rassemblement National thanks to the victory of the Nouveau Front Populaire. This result must now be extended by defeating Macron’s power grab. He wants to keep the power that the French voters took away from him. There can be no question of accepting this kind of return to the royal veto against a vote by the electorate. There can be no question of allowing the return of unscrupulous combinations and secret plots to impose themselves through a coalition different to the one chosen by the popular vote! What is unacceptable must not be accepted. And this must be translated into concrete action, until the president respects the decision made through universal suffrage.
https://jacobin.com/2024/07/melenchon-macron-france-left-winner/