In the end, something had to give. When France's Fifth Republic was set up under Charles de Gaulle the idea was that its institutions would constitute a form of buttress for the president. But that did not mean the presidency itself was immune to collapse. It is true that, by bypassing Parliamentary votes on key legislation, the current presidency has maintained the appearance of power, rather as Soviet embalmers preserved the appearance of Lenin. But in reality President François Hollande is already a political casualty, rejected by public opinion and defied by his own lieutenants.
The litany of woes facing the president is long. There are the low and ever-plunging approval ratings, the ultimately abandoned attempt to get terrorists stripped of French nationality, the labour reform bill that has attracted one of the longest rebellions in French social history, the sight of Hollande's former protégé, economy minister Emmanuel Macron, being anointed as the president's likely successor, and of his former economy minister Arnaud Montebourg earmarking himself for that role. In the meantime the incessant demands for a primary election to choose the Left's candidate for next year's presidential election have not gone away, the number of potential candidates has mushroomed and the summer break looms amid questions that are no longer about whether the incumbent president could stand again but about when he will officially withdraw from the fray.
Faced with such circumstances President Hollande has now accepted the principle of a primary election held by the Socialist Party to choose its 2017 presidential candidate, and in doing so he has given himself some breathing space. His opponents on the right might shrug their shoulders at the move, while those on the left might dismiss it. But this tactic at least has the merit of bringing some order to the socialist house. The Socialist Party (PS) may have been falling apart but now its various parts at least have a common focal point. These are the dates for the two rounds of the primary, January 22nd and January 29th, 2017, that everyone will now have to pay attention to whether they like it or not.
The first effect of the surprise announcement can already be seen. From MP Marie-Noëlle Lienemann to Montebourg and former education minister Benoît Hamon, and from Macron to prime minister Manual Valls, a number of people have been planning to stand or thinking of putting their hats in the ring, and now all of them know the score. No more pie in the sky plans, the timetable has been set. Montebourg and the others threatened to tear down political obstacles, now they have to construct something.
For François Hollande the immediate benefit of the announcement is that it wins him a few months. Whichever way the saga of the labour reform bill goes, he is already wrung out and the doubts over his candidacy have opened the way to talk about his succession even before he has gone. Like it or not, the bell signalling the end of the Hollande era had already sounded in the Socialist Party and all of the president's rivals and opponents were acting as if he was no longer there. As yet another politician's seemingly impossible candidacy gradually became slightly less improbable, it was discussed in public.
Everyone hastened the end by thinking about what came afterwards. Hollande supporters may have announced that the president would reveal his decision whether to stand again or not next January, but as far as many were concerned winter had already arrived. But now, by accepting the principle of the primary Hollande has postponed the contest. Whether he is a candidate or not, this primary will take place and that changes the mood, particularly if, as the president hopes, between now and then unemployment goes down, and his claim that “things are better” is no longer the object of sniggering but becomes a reality felt by the French public.
The second benefit that the Elysée hopes to gain from the announcement is more subtle. By accepting, contrary to all expectations, that he will take part in a primary and thus come down from his presidential pedestal, Hollande in fact gets rid of his main handicap – his own record in office. Six months from the real start of the electoral campaign, the level of his unpopularity beats all records under the Fifth Republic. With just a little more effort he could be getting polls in which his level of support among French people falls to single digits!
But now, by descending into the arena, he counts on being able to get rid of his ragged robes of a cursed president and instead pull on his humble costume of modest candidate. Farewell the leader besieged in his palace, hello to the simple man among counterparts. In a sense it is the great return of the 'normal' candidate that Hollande sought to portray himself as in the 2012 campaign. And if he should beat the internal competition there would then be no obstacle to him campaigning for the Elysée, as he could insist that his shift towards economic liberalism, and thus his record in office, had just been approved by voters on the Left.
Since the announcement late last week by Socialist Party first secretary Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, Hollande's supporters have recovered their spirits. They speak readily of the “Boss's surprise”. Hollande, they insist, will in the end be transformed. By accepting the unthinkable, Hollande has apparently surprised everyone and all those who had already buried him will be reminded of that fact. Yet one needs to be cautious. This optimism may be justified, but the president's initiative is extremely unpredictable.
First of all, the contest itself must take place. To talk of a primary is one thing, but to put it in operation is quite another. A national committee will decide on the election's format on October 2nd. If it turns out that the primary is designed just for the leader, with quite restrictive conditions so that the confrontation is reduced to a contest between Hollande, centre-left politician Jean-Luc Bennahmias and green politician François de Rugy, then none of what has just been written would apply. It would mean François Hollande had once more fallen back into his old practice of trying to find a compromise which, for the last five years, has consisted of an alliance between him and himself, to the exclusion of all others. This clever tactic would go the way of all such schemes and be doomed to oblivion.
If, on the other hand, the initiative is a sincere one and open to all the president's and prime minister's internal opponents, it may still not prove to be the president's ultimate weapon. The first danger for François Hollande is, of course, that he might be beaten. To find himself hammered as the 2007 socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal was when she tried to stand again in 2011. It would be an historic and humiliating exit for a sitting president. It would be the culmination of a journey that has seen him cut himself off from his own electorate without broadening his appeal to his opponents. Already Hollande supporters are saying that defeat in the primary would be no more catastrophic than being eliminated in the first round of the presidential election itself.
The second risk for Hollande lies in the very nature of the process. This unprecedented primary, involving an incumbent president reduced to the role of just another candidate, could turn into a form of referendum. “Yes” or “no” to François Hollande? For years we've seen what referendums lead to. They don't respond to the question that has been posed but instead censure the person who posed the question.
Indeed, Hollande's blitzkrieg reminds one of right-wing president Jacques Chirac's gamble in 1997. In a bid to increase his Parliamentary majority, the then-president dissolved the National Assembly and held fresh Parliamentary elections – which the Right lost. Today the current president has in effect announced that that he is 'dissolving' himself by becoming simply a candidate in an internal election. The coming weeks will show if he has more success than his predecessor...
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter