France Analysis

French parliamentary elections: once more, nothing is happening as foreseen

The result of France’s parliamentary elections in June appears as uncertain as, just weeks ago, did that of the presidential elections. President-elect Emmanuel Macron’s fledgling République en Marche! movement has unveiled 428 candidates it will field, comprised mostly of political rookies and unknowns. Meanwhile, the old traditional parties, apprehensive after their presidential election defeat, place their hopes in the electorate backing off from the political unknown of the newly-elected maverick president. Mediapart’s political commentator Hubert Huertas examines why, in these crucial elections, once again nothing is happening as was foreseen.

Hubert Huertas

This article is freely available.

Of the 428 parliamentary election candidates presented on Thursday by Richard Ferrand, the secretary-general of president-elect Emmanuel Macron’s movement République en Marche! (Republic on the Move!), half are political rookies. If this innovation were to lead to achieving a parliamentary majority, then the novelty would be even more destabilising than Macron’s election as France’s head of state. But we’re not there yet.

Illustration 1
Emmanuel Macron (left) with his République en Marche! movement's general secretary Richard Ferrand.

Beyond the parity of men and women candidates, or the balance between members of civil society and those from the political world, this phenomenon illustrates the extent of Macron’s presidential gamble. Now designated to the highest office of state, the 39-year-old seeks to multiply the loaves, creating lots of little Macrons across the country.    

The young man who on Sunday will be inaugurated as leader of the world’s fifth-largest economy plans to follow up with the rationale of his election success to shake up that certitude that is the most anchored within France’s institutions: the bonus for seniority. Macron is persuaded that having chosen to make like himself president, The French people will be logical with themselves by returning a parliamentary majority in his image. But the game is not won in advance.

With the unveiling of the République en Marche! (REM) candidates and the naming of the constituencies where they will stand for election prompted a furious reaction on Thursday from centre-right MoDem party leader François Bayrou. In February, he had handed a significant boost to Macron’s by allying himself and his party to the latter’s election campaign, but the revelation that MoDem candidates would be given just 35 constituencies to fight as allies of the REM movement, instead of what he claimed was a promised 120, has erupted into a major clash. Beyond the fact that the dispute will leave scars behind, it is a reminder that between championing a renewal of the system and putting it into place in the ossified world of France’s 59-year-old Fifth Republic, there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip.

The tradition that has it that an outgoing Member of Parliament (MP) is the most legitimate candidate to stand in a constituency is considered as a plain fact in France ever since the dawn of republican times, and the weight of that belief is often decisive. An outgoing MP is supposedly at an advantage with their experience and high profile. On the occasion of every election, an unwritten law applied everywhere gives priority to the outgoing representative over an aspirant from a new generation.  

That is how, from one mandate to another, there is a perpetuation of municipal or legislative power over decades. Sometimes decried, often reaffirmed. If the decision last December by outgoing president François Hollande that he would not seek re-election was regarded as a major event, it is because he broke off with what was evident, namely that a ‘normal’ elected representative must run for re-election whenever the law allows him to. The French have complained for so long that they must put up with the same faces, but they nevertheless put them back in power. With their back to the wall, and in face of the ballot box, they tend to vote for what they know rather than the unknown.    

In this interlacing of aspiring for something new and maintaining the old in place, Macron has made a hazardous choice which appears much like a risking of his all: faites vos jeux, rien ne va plus. He is gambling on his power only just achieved, convinced that his election corresponds with a definite choice for change. He sees himself as the result of a slow process of  a calling into question, and considers that his victory represents a desire for something else and a need for new faces.

He also believes he is given a guarantee through the force of France’s institutions. The first, which predominates, is the election of a president through universal suffrage. It ‘suffices’ to obtain a quarter or even a fifth of votes cast to become, in the case of victory in the second round, the symbol of a whole nation. The second element is the election of MPs on a ‘first past the post’ majority basis. In the follow-up to the presidential ballot, the candidates to become MPs who are nominated by the movement or party representing the presidential majority have until now benefitted from a greater chance of obtaining the critical percentage, between 30%-35% of votes cast in the first round, to achieve an absolute majority in parliament’s lower house, the National Assembly. This seemingly implacable process will be put to the test in June.  

Emmanuel Macron’s opponents are betting on a no less uncertain scenario. They believe that the parliamentary elections will not see the habitual victory of the newly-elected president’s political allies but rather the settling of scores. To their mind, Macron was not elected for his programme, but rather by default, by an electorate who voted against the far-right. In this context, the new world that Macron claims to represent will be punished in the two rounds of the parliamentary elections on June 11th and 18th by the re-appointment of what he has called “the old world”. Thus the parties whose candidates were beaten in the first round of the presidential elections last April 23rd have not been cleared out but will act as moderators in charge of ensuring continuity amid the uncertainties of the change that has begun.   

The danger is to regard Macron’s win in the second round as if nothing in particular has occurred. From the Left to the Right, and even to the far-right, those who did not win are behaving as if they have not lost. Nicolas Sarkozy, who needed five years to understand that he was no longer president, has still not come to terms with the fact that he was dismissed in the first round of his conservative Les Républicains (LR) party’s primary elections last November, and envisages renewing with a role of power via his conservative allies François Baroin (who aspires to the post of prime minister if the LR wins a majority in parliament), Laurent Wauquiez and Eric Ciotti. For Baroin, his alignment with Sarkozy, and his public rallying of the LR’s defeated, scandal-hit presidential candidate François Fillon, has no reason to temper his aspirations of leading a co-habitation government under Macron.

Meanwhile, the divided Socialist Party (PS) and its allies, who no longer know if they still exist nor whether they are to be part of a majority or an opposition, have succeeded in transforming themselves into quartered pieces of confetti. They have invented movements within parties, parties of parties, “trans-partisan groups” concerning defeated PS presidential candidate Benoît Hamon, or “new movements” as proclaimed by other party leftwingers Martine Aubry, Anne Hidalgo, and Christiane Taubira.  The leader of the radical-left France Insoumise (France Unbowed) movement, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has become the strongman of the Left after his impressive score in the presidential election first round, when he was defeated but came well ahead, in fourth place and with almost 20% of votes cast, of the PS’s Hamon.  Mélenchon scolds his potential political allies, rejects them and excommunicates them. He doesn’t want to reduce the PS to the smallest portion of representation, he openly declares he wants to “replace” the party. To listen to him is to believe that he alone will represent what is Left.  

Amid all these gambles, Macron and his opposing movement have shown their cards with such confidence that it almost appears to be recklessness. To pull it off at such a level, Macron’s team must prove itself capable of technical perfection but the performance on Thursday when it announced the movement’s candidates for June, with gaffes that notably included presenting a few candidates who immediately denied ever having applied for the position, showed that perfection was missing. As for Macron’s opponents, their plans are risky. They talk with loud voices, but what do they have in reserve? How many divisions are splitting both the Right and the Left? On the face of events, the Left is in danger of all but disappearing, while the Right has more of a chance of forming a strong minority than a small majority, and the far-right cannot hide its inner turmoil.

With the excessive confidence of Macron’s camp, and the old reflexes of the dominant on the part of those who were dominated, this sum of incertitude has turned the parliamentary elections into an unpredictable event. More than ever, this mad spring for the political institutions of the Fifth Republic brings us back to the leitmotiv: decidedly, nothing is happening as was foreseen.

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  • The French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Graham Tearse