As days passed, French President Emmanuel Macron faced a political tragedy culminating in his decision on June 9 to dissolve the National Assembly using Article 12 of the Constitution, calling for early legislative elections on June 30 and July 7. This move followed the far-right party National Rally's landslide victory in the European election. Since then, France's politicians, media, cultural figures, and even former President Francois Hollande, who will run as a candidate MP with the new Popular Front in la Correze, have been immersed in the president's summer political saga.
President Macron's decision to dissolve the National Assembly stemmed from months of considering this nuclear constitutional option. His party, Renaissance, had only a relative majority in the National Assembly, making governance challenging after the June 2022 legislative elections. This political impasse left his administration in a hung parliament and facing the dilemma of a lame-duck presidency.
For those who don’t know President Macron’s style and scornful attitude toward his opponents and political adversaries – his decision to dissolve the lower chamber, was fully about politicking further the toxic political terrain, and destabilizing the far-right bloc, as a result, he provoked a real psychological coup, days before the Paris 2024 Games and a week before the UEFA Euro 2024 in Germany, a cataclysm that the French did not wish. During Macron's tenure since 2017, state affairs have undergone a transformation toward a distinctly startup nation style. As a president intent on revolutionizing politics, he seeks to bring an end to the "old world," as described in his book "Revolution."
Chronologically, the origin of the divorce between President Macron and his adversary politicians, left-leaning media, and voters alike goes back early to his first days in the Elysee Palace, started in the summer of 2018 with the Alexander (Lahcen) Ben Alla scandal; it was the first clash between the young promising president and the outspoken engaged media, later a social protest movement, the “Yellow Vests,” occurred with determination against rising taxes and high cost of living in fall 2018, and likely the COVID-19 outbreak broke where all of humanity had to deal with the 21st-century mortal pandemic in 2019, the French government did have to insure the population with masks shortage and vaccine efficiency – until his reelection in 2022, in a remake of the 2017 presidential election against the candidate of the far-right party National Ally's (RN) Marine Le Pen.
Macron, nevertheless, thought this time, that the French gave him a second chance and political capital to implement his reforms and unmask the far-right party and its xenophobic anti-Arab and anti-Muslim program. In 2023, President Macron decided to brutally pass the unpopular retirement and pension reform, using Article 49-3 of the Constitution, an executive order action. His ex-Premier Elisabeth Borne used to be able to govern but in the summer of 2023, France’s large and medium cities faced street battles between young French of North African descent and the police, the former who are facing racism and socio-professional marginalization. Hence, any protest movement in France turned violent ever since – people in France are venting anger and frustration against the French president.
This brings us to better understand that the June 9 European elections’ result was de facto a referendum on the president and his party Renaissance, a party without a base. President Macron’s decision to dissolve the lower chamber created a violent scenario, he made France more divided, and he fabricated a sentiment in the people’s mind, moving from revolt to revolution if the result of July 7 would not give a majority to the two main ideologically enemies: the new Republican Front led by the left and the National Ally party and his coalition. Here France would be in a deep regime crisis, pushing the president to use Article 16 of the Constitution.
This anti-Macron sentiment, however, has sociologically managed to reunite the problematic issues of socioeconomic inequality, ethnic and religious cohesion, and political bankruptcy of the conventional political parties. Thus, the failure of the conventional political parties left President Macron, after imploding the socialist party in 2017 and exploding the LR party in 2022 to think is working, feeling the breeze of spring, consequently, neither his party who went from the Republic forward to the Renaissance/despair nor the LR party exist anymore.
President Macron was hit by the boomerang effect, his decision to dissolve the lower chamber is ending the Renaissance and LR parties alike, and the former does not have much to lose because it was a vertical party by all means, as for the latter his so-called Gaulian values were lost since the election of ex-President Sarkozy in 2007, who dis-demonized the FN party and made the Le Pen politically correct. The ongoing drama queen series in the House of LR reflects mainstream media’s overlap of the storylines, as the LR party base was split in 2017 between President Macron and Le Pen dynasty, meanwhile, the bankrupted leaders of the LR party have continued in their state of denial until the current party Chair Eric Ciotti, a far-right extremist zealot, exploded late President Jacques Chirac party’s values and joined the RN party block for right parties coalition, à la Melloni in Italy.
The end-game strategy of President Macron is to sell France’s political crisis and eventually turn it into a socio-cultural crisis nationally and regionally between frustrated voters who adhered en masse to the RN party anti-immigration program, while leaving millions of voters wondering about the universal values of the French Republic: liberty, equality, and fraternity. In this stance, soccer stars like Kylian Mbappé urge youth to vote to counter extremists in the upcoming June 30 and July 7 legislative elections.
These elections are, all things considered, a political test for the 2027 presidential election. Nevertheless, President Macron's preemptive politicking action is already seen by a large majority of French voters as suicidal. He found himself cornered and incoherent with his bold decisions, whether on domestic public policies like immigration, security and public health as on his foreign policy in the Ukraine War, the ongoing carnage in Palestine, and France’s decline in the West and the African Sahel, it was a debacle.
Thus, he created a tripartition configuration between the reunited left bloc and the far-right extremist bloc, and the discredited center incarnated by an unpopular president. President Macron’s strategy is a real institutional and societal tragedy for thinking to demystify the far-right, whose electoral narrative is violent protestation and an empty proposition. Today, the RN party and its coalition are one step from Matignon Hotel (the premiership building), the far-right RN leader, the 29-year-old Jordan Baredella with a blank resume, would be the first far-right premier in the fifth republic and the youngest premier if his far-right bloc gets the majority (289 seats) in the lower chamber, sharing the power with President Macron under a real semi-presidential system. It’s a constitutional coexistence or a cohabitation, according to Article 20 of the 1958 Constitution. In a fractured and divided France, the far-right bloc will be leading and dealing with a fragmented society, a high cost of living, and a worrisome image of France abroad.
The ex-FN party, National Ally, went from a racist party in the 70s to a normal party in the late 90s to a banal party in the 2000s to power in 2024, in other words, in five decades the Le Pen dynasty excelled in challenging and seducing the Parisian political establishment and the right elite to move from sociology to political science/polity!
In sum, in this conflictual relationship between a lame-duck president and the angry voters, alas, the majority of French voters are voting for a xenophobic coalition well fed lately by racist media and an egotistical president.
