After five years of mandate as deputy La République en Marche (LRM), Hugues Ranson highlights “his doubts”. The vice-president LRM of the National Assembly announced, Wednesday, February 16, not to want to stand once more in the next legislative elections, highlighting his criticisms of the majority project as well as the role of Parliament.
MP for Paris and co-founder of En commun, a movement embodying the left wing of the majority, Mr. Renson says his decision is “a well thought-out political act”. “It is both the fruit of a doubt regarding the political recomposition and the progressive project as I had envisaged them, of a concern regarding the evolution of our parliamentary democracy, and an alert, too, regarding the excesses of our politico-media system”wrote on his website the co-founder of In common.
This party, made up of around forty LRM parliamentarians, is supported by the Minister of Ecology, Barbara Pompili. In the public debate, these elected officials highlight their differences on the government’s social policy. But in the group, many believe that In common “has no political weight”.
“Limits” of the parliamentary exercise
Mr. Renson, who readily claims the humanist commitment of former right-wing president Jacques Chirac, in his capacity as vice-president of the Palais Bourbon, led many debates during the legislature but found serious limits.
“Parliament no longer functions as it should. Desired by its founders to be balanced, half-presidential, half-parliamentary, our Republic has drawn the consequences neither from the establishment of the five-year term, nor from the inversion of the electoral calendar which makes the legislative elections the replica of the presidential election, nor from ‘a personal and centralized practice of power at work since the 2000s’he described.
“The National Assembly comes to be considered – and sometimes to consider itself – as a recording chamber for decisions made elsewhere”he noted. “In the debates, divergent voices and temperance have little place, between the ease of systematic opposition and the sclerosis of majority discipline”he further noted.
Mr. Renson also tackles the “political and media system in an impasse”, referring both to social networks and to debates on television sets, where the “Buzz and Clash”. “The country needs a debate on the options that are opening up. It needs different, competing and identified political lines and projects. Going beyond is not obliteration. And divisions are not a risk. On the contrary, they are a sign of the vitality of our democracy.he further observed as several right-wing politicians joined the majority camp.
“Islamo-leftism”, law on global security, state of emergency… Carrying its share of debates, the year 2021 had already been marked by several disaffections within the group La République en Marche. Since 2017, the group, which initially had 313 deputies, has seen around forty of its members leave it.
