AFP
Macron opens new consultations in a persistent fog
Still looking for a government, Emmanuel Macron must open a “new cycle of consultations” on Tuesday, without LFI or the RN, but with the support of “personalities” supposed to help him get out of the impasse after having swept aside the Lucie Castets option, provoking ire on the left. Forty-two days – a post-war record – after having accepted the resignation of Gabriel Attal’s government, the succession is floating in limbo and the political Rubik’s cube that Emmanuel Macron is constantly turning over remains insoluble. Hoping to unblock the situation and in search of “institutional stability”, the head of state wants to continue to exchange on Tuesday with party leaders, but also with “personalities distinguished by their experience of service to the State and the Republic”, he announced in a press release on Monday evening. If neither the program nor the casting have been communicated by the presidency, one certainty: the entire political spectrum will not be represented. On the far right, the National Rally (RN) and its allies led by Eric Ciotti will not be invited, indicated a close friend of the president. Received on Monday at the end of a first round of consultations, they accused Emmanuel Macron of organizing “chaos” after the dissolution, Marine Le Pen (RN) asking the president to open an extraordinary session of the National Assembly before the appointment of a Prime Minister and his government, in order to possibly censure him. Above all, the seats should remain empty on the left. La France insoumise, presented as a scarecrow by its Macronist and right-wing adversaries, will not receive an invitation card either. In any case, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party had sharply declined in advance, as had its partners within the New Popular Front, the socialists, the ecologists and the communists. Because the left is furious: the head of state has closed, it seems definitively, the door to a government led by Lucie Castets, candidate on behalf of the NFP. In this context, it is therefore out of the question for the left to exchange with the president, except on the basis of a team led by the 37-year-old senior civil servant, who has been campaigning for 7 weeks. – A popular mobilization? – Emmanuel Macron “has noted that a government based solely on the program and the parties proposed by the alliance bringing together the most deputies, the New Popular Front, would be immediately censored by all the other groups represented in the National Assembly,” argued the Elysée. A position corroborated by the speeches of opponents of the NFP, from Marine Le Pen to the head of the Republican Right deputies Laurent Wauquiez, including the leaders of the various components of the Macronist bloc, led by Gabriel Attal. And if the Insoumis agree not to be in the government, as Jean-Luc Mélenchon suggested, “that changes absolutely nothing,” asserted Ms. Le Pen. Ms. Castets out of the running? “An anti-democratic coup”, “a shame”, “distressing” were the reactions of the left-wing forces in unison, with the Insoumis reviving their threat to initiate impeachment proceedings against the head of state. “The Republic was born from the refusal of personal power”, recalled the head of the PS Olivier Faure in a laconic tweet, before clarifying his thoughts on Tuesday morning on France 2. While Emmanuel Macron, banking on the “spirit of responsibility” of each, particularly urged the socialists, communists and environmentalists to “cooperate with the other political forces” — and therefore to dissociate themselves from the Mélenchonists — the New Popular Front continues to play as a pack. And hopes for the reinforcement of a “great popular mobilization” in the face of the choice of the head of state, said the leader of the communists Fabien Roussel. Emmanuel Macron, who wants to be master of the clocks, is this time moving against the clock, since a budget, the outline of which was prepared by the Attal team, must theoretically be presented on October 1st to the Assembly. In the shorter term, the president must open the Paralympic Games on Wednesday evening before flying out on Thursday afternoon for a visit to Serbia. fff-jmt/rr
