Parisian election posters showing candidate for the 2017 presidential election Emmanuel Macron, March 23, 2017. Apaydin Alain/Press Association. All rights reserved.Macron won the 2017 election with more than 65% of votes against Le Pen.
He became the new president on May 7 after starting a new political movement
just over a year ago. Sidelining the traditional political leaders and parties,
Macron wants to push for a new way of thinking outside of the traditional
left/right political spectrum. His political convictions are mainly liberal and he
has called for a strong country within the context of globalisation. But does two-thirds of French voters
choosing Emmanuel Macron over Marine Le Pen in Sunday’s presidential elections
mark the beginning of a stalemate in France’s participatory democracy? So far the newly elected president has offered few paths to
citizen empowerment.
The 2017
election has brought a period of instability where a political majority will be
hard to come by. Macron’s victory over Le Pen was only a partial success as he
needs a majority in parliament to be able to govern. His charisma will not be
sufficient for his candidates to win next month’s election for the legislature,
and he needs to show a clear political profile.
His En
Marche (“On the Move”) slogan is a tool created to win the presidential race,
but it does not come with a network in parliament.
It is
also rather doubtful that a political consensus will emerge regarding reforms
that need to be tackled. Macron’s plans are not particularly detailed, with
everything arranged around the concept of a strong leader.
So far,
the centrist En Marche movement has
most resembled a gospel show with songs, speeches, snappy one-liners and video
clips.
En Marche
itself is unlikely to be a strong movement as its profile is too weak. Nor is
it a movement marked by participatory democracy. En Marche and “La France insoumise”, a far-left
coalition led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, share some similarities with the Spanish
movements Los Ciudadanos and Podemos.
Most of
all, I believe that the En Marche
movement represents a political transition where parties are being forced to
re-invent themselves. Parties are being forced to re-invent themselves.
Top-down
reformist
Macron
wants to use his mandate to initiate strong economic reforms, but so far he has
given no indication of how to shape a social dialogue with trade unions and
other organisations.
There is
also no real democratic element to his plans, although he said he might use the
referendum as a tool if his reforms are not successful in parliament.
Macron
even announced that he would cut short debates and govern by decree in order to
introduce strong economic reforms in the beginning of his presidency. He has
said too little about the environment, and there are no plans to give citizens
a greater say in environmental issues. Macron even announced that he would cut short
debates and govern by decree…
Nor is
there any proposal on the table to reform the institutions of the Fifth
Republic. Macron simply wants to use the ballot to his own ends in order to be
seen as a great reformist.
All this
is creating a political void in France which makes the current political
situation particularly interesting.
The
conservative Republicans might gain seats in the June election as they did well
in the last mid-term elections, while the Socialist Party will struggle to
survive as a bloc in parliament. As for the other parties, the far-right
National Front might emerge with a parliamentary group of around 20 to 30
members, but that is far from certain under the current electoral system which
stretches over two rounds.
With the
leftwing movement, La France insoumise, facing
the same uncertainty, En Marche and
the Republicans may dominate with two or three other minor political forces in
power.
New
situation
This is
the first time France faces such a fragmented situation since the Fifth Republic,
its current governmental system, was created by Charles de Gaulle in 1958. It
has often been argued that French voters are dissatisfied with their political
parties and leaders. He said he might use the referendum as a tool if his reforms are not successful
in parliament.
In fact,
this dissatisfaction is already written into the French constitution as there
are two ways of expressing national sovereignty in France: through the
parliament or by referendum.
Today, I
am convinced that direct democratic tools could help to reshape the French
political landscape.
French
politics has always been seen as a game reserved for professional elites who
have had a long career. But we need more change in political mandates with
collective tools that are less focused on a single person.
A new
political culture cannot emerge through decrees but through the implementation
of new tools that encourage citizen participation.
Plan
for democratisation?
I’ve
often heard people say that “we get the politicians we deserve”, but I think
that with the help of new democratic tools we could transform that saying into
“we are responsible for what happens”.
We
deserve citizen empowerment. Macron has failed to present a plan to make the
representative government more democratic, showing little interest in this
matter as a candidate. This is a real pity as direct democratic tools could
help Macron legitimise the strong reforms he needs. We need more change in political
mandates with collective tools that are less focused on a single person.
So far,
he has merely recycled some ideas that other candidates put forward about
reducing the number of parliamentarians or introducting proportional
representation to a certain degree – an election pledge made by François
Hollande when he ran for president in 2012.
The
coming weeks will reveal Macron’s true political style as well as his
strategies to create a strong political consensus behind his social and
economic reforms.
The original article was first published on swissinfo.ch – a platform on direct democracy issues – on May 8, 2017. Thanks for permission to republish.