It may be that the government passes its pension reform to the forceps (we mean: by the use of article 49-3 of the Constitution), without waiting for the challenge to weaken.
It’s unheard of: French Mitterrand said that if there are more than a million demonstrators in the street, we must not insist, what he had done on the private school.
In addition to the huge demonstrations, there are the polls: 80% of those polled are hostile to this reform; 90% of assets. Never seen. Admittedly, some of the opponents are not so much hostile to the reform itself as to a president whom the vast majority of French people no longer want.
However, the stakes are limited: if the reform passes, the savings for companies will be 5 billion euros (15 if all the new “active people” have a job, which is not likely to happen.) If the France emancipated itself from the European electricity market, which Spain and Portugal did, the same companies would have 50 to 100 billion to gain. Real debates are forbidden.
There would however be loopholes: thus the president could recognize in a speech, that there is a real problem and launch states general of the retirement spreading over several months and not neglecting any aspect of the question, in particular the policy family. But is Macron still able to speak eye to eye to the French?
Villepin had not thought of that. Too bad: he was pitifully obliged to let Chirac withdraw the law on the SMIC-jeunes, already voted and promulgated: a first in the legislative history of France. It is not excluded that the current government will be obliged, if the law is passed, to come to this.
Be that as it may, President Macron’s rating has fallen very low. One wonders who will still dare to claim him in the next elections. On the move will not go very far.
The opposition of the RN is relatively discreet, standardization obliges. Zemmour half-approved of the reform, one political blunder after another.
Although being the oldest opposition party, the Republicans have decided to come to the aid of a government rejected by a large majority of the French and whose malfeasance is well known. (Painful diplomacy, disarmament of France, sale of French assets, destructive societal reforms, indifference to demography, open doors to immigration, passivity in the face of growing insecurity.) Chateaubriand said that the opposition does not divide, which Mitterrand, who never approved of what General de Gaulle could do, understood. LR fell to almost 5%. It is not by supporting such a discredited government that it will recover. The choice of the opposition, made by a small group, led by Aurélien Pradié is more coherent. What impact will it have on the future of the party? The future will tell
There remains the NUPES which, thanks to its heckling and its often deplorable excesses, unfortunately appears to be the main opposition party. Will we see, in the second rounds of the next presidential elections, a candidate from this party (or rather from this galaxy) in the second round? Nothing should be ruled out.
In any case, this battle, the stakes of which remain limited, will leave a lot of corpses. Which is a shame at a time when, faced with an unprecedented diplomatic and economic crisis, the French do not know where they stand and, faced with Macron’s destructive regime, are looking for an opposition that knows how to oppose.
This article is originally published on libertepolitique.com
