A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI #186 - France at the crossroads (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

With the polls just closed, Emanuel Macron played his last card and 
dissolved the National Assembly, sending the country to the polls. 
Voting will take place in two rounds on 30 June and 7 July respectively. 
577 deputies will have to be read, one for each electoral constituency; 
to obtain an absolute majority in the National Assembly, 289 seats are 
needed. Voting takes place in the first round for individual 
constituencies. If the candidate does not reach an absolute majority, we 
proceed to the second round in which the first two candidates who 
obtained the highest number of votes participate. This electoral system 
means that the data relating to the votes obtained by the party or 
coalition at a national level does not necessarily correspond to that of 
the sum of those elected in the individual constituencies of the 
constituencies. Therefore, it is important on the one hand to choose the 
candidates and that they enjoy a personal consensus, and on the other 
the capacity for coalition agreements and desistance agreements, in 
order to allow the preferred candidate to reach the ballot, as it is 
difficult for a party or a coalition has a majority in the college 
already in the first round.
And here emerges clearly a first reason for the President's tactical 
plan who, faced with the certification of the decline in support for his 
coalition, decided to grant a short period of time for the elections to 
take place, in order to force adversaries suddenly and untested 
coalitions. As is obvious, this is a long-thought-out move, before the 
elections and to be implemented in the event of an electoral debacle for 
the Macronian coalition.

The profound reasons for the crisis

Although Macron's second mandate in particular proved to be a failure in 
many respects, the President did not need particular acumen to be aware 
and confirm his failures. On the international level, his politics were 
characterized by the total shipwreck of what remained of the French 
empire and of Francophonie. The failure was evident, especially in 
Central Africa and in the sub-Saharan area, where the various 
French-speaking states, supported by France, fell one after the other, 
under the pressure of coups d'état which saw the Russia and in some 
cases Chinese economic influence prevail. In fact, French Africa no 
longer exists and the remaining remnants of the foreign legion were not 
very cordially invited to leave the various countries in which they 
operated to guarantee French interests. This explains Macron's fury 
against Russia in the Ukrainian war: in other words, Macron and the 
French don't care a damn about Ukraine and its people, but were and are 
interested instead in punishing Russia for its interference in French 
former colonies and for the erosion of France's presence and 
international role in Africa. What better opportunity to achieve the 
goal than to make others pay the cost and Europe pay the economic cost! 
As events in Africa demonstrate, however, this is a losing strategy with 
no prospects, because in addition to conducting its war campaign in 
Ukraine to the detriment of the people of that country, Russia has 
strengthened its presence in Africa, completing the annihilation of the 
French presence on the continent.
What has been reckless in foreign policy has had repercussions on the 
domestic level, where despite the undoubted successes of the expansive 
activities of French capitalism, which however has long had a 
multinational character, having retained its name only in its 
denomination, the financial cost of this policy it has deprived the 
resources relating to the financing of welfare and forced the country to 
make malicious and unpopular reforms.
There is no Frenchman who has forgotten the strenuous struggle of the 
social forces of the left and right against the pension reform, the huge 
demonstrations, the protests, the mobilisations, crushed with a 
questionable constitutional practice, such as the application of the 
art. 49 of the Constitution which allowed the President to impose his 
own choices beyond the parliamentary vote. Like any politician, Macron 
should know that sooner or later the issues come home to roost and the 
bills are paid: voters have many defects, but often have an elephant's 
memory when it comes to touching their pockets and their rights.
Another great mistake of the President was that of not understanding 
that to endorse the choice to divert funds intended for agriculture from 
the European Union budget for the financing of the Ukrainian war and at 
the same time allow Ukraine's entry into the Union, leaving that its 
agricultural products competed with those of French agriculture was and 
is an unforgivable mistake, especially when at the same time they are 
asked to respect the green policy, to leave part of the arable land 
uncultivated to carry out rotation and protect the environment , to set 
limits and regulate livestock farming, eliminating subsidies for 
agricultural fuel and to support the many commuters forced to move to 
support the economic activities of the suburbs of France, (yellow vests) 
causes damage to incomes that will not be forgotten .
This lack of funds and resources has also prevented necessary 
investments in the integration of emigration, but above all it has 
affected the functioning of a welfare system aimed at supporting a 
population of the country that has been multi-ethnic and multi-religious 
for decades. In particular, the ghettoization of populations of culture 
and origin from Islamic countries, today constitutes a problem that 
fuels the right and worries the country, pushing it to orient its vote 
against the government. In pointing out Macron's many failures, one 
could continue, moving the analysis of every government activity whose 
choices appear more than questionable and a harbinger of an overall 
decay of the nation which has repercussions on its role in Europe and 
internationally.

Game theory according to Macron

In order to remedy this disaster, the President today once again plays 
the old card of the former Gaullist right, deluding himself that 
referring to the National Rassemblement with the term Lepenista still 
functions as an element of exclusion from the democratic game and ends 
up strengthening it as a lesser evil the Macronian center during the 
elections and thanks to the double shift system. But this time the game 
may not succeed considering that this time the left presents itself as a 
unit in the Nouveau front populaire which is gaining consensus according 
to the polls and that the number of French people who intend to go to 
the polls is growing, all this while Macron's grouping, Renaissance, 
ranks third.
It must also be said that the yielding of the former Gaullist party and 
its President Ciotti to overcome all restraint in allying themselves 
with Marine Le Pen to strengthen the right goes hand in hand with those 
French Jews who, frightened by support for Palestine and by Islamism 
rediscover their class position on the right and rely on it to be 
protected. to the most extreme right and to the grandchildren of the 
torturers who accompanied their grandparents to the concentration camps 
and gas chambers. What is happening demonstrates that the lessons of 
history can be forgotten when an immediate and present danger knocks at 
the door, making us forget what has been, but could still be, and making 
a clean sweep of the profound reasons that sooner or later nevertheless 
re-emerge.
Nothing will prevent the apartments at the National Rassemblement, once 
the elections are over, from forgetting the support they have received 
and dedicating their attention to Muslims and French Jews, remembering 
that both Jews and Palestinians are, after all, Semites. They have 
forgotten how Brecht said that: "First of all they came to take the 
Gypsies / and I was happy, because they were stealing. Then they came to 
take the Jews / and I kept quiet, because I disliked them. Then they 
came to get the homosexuals, / and I was relieved, because they were 
annoying to me. Then they came to get the communists, / and I didn't say 
anything, because I wasn't a communist. One day they came for me, / and 
there was no one left to protest."
Only after the second round will we have the true result of this 
electoral confrontation and will we know if France is heading towards a 
cohabitation between the monarch President and a National Assembly that 
will be hostile to him, whether it is managed by the right or the left. 
Both of these sides, if victorious, will not have the resources to 
implement the ambitious programs they now present to counter Macron's 
policy, unless they understand that their first objective is to put an 
end to the war, in France as in Europe, and allocate resources that 
would like to be used in rearmament and wars, in social investments and 
in strengthening welfare, regardless of the priorities that each of the 
two sides will give to its implementation.
In France, as elsewhere, today there is a growing problem that dominates 
every other, that of the distribution of wealth, of growing 
inequalities, of ever-widening pockets of poverty, of the growing 
ignorance resulting from the failure of educational institutions, from 
the loss of jobs resulting from company restructuring e
from technological innovation, from the crisis of health systems, from 
the problems of climate change which will need to be made compatible 
with the needs of production and the well-being of the population.
From this experience and this confrontation the left - starting from 
France - must come out with realistic and practicable proposals, without 
which it is doomed to defeat.

The Editorial Staff

https://www.ucadi.org/2024/06/30/la-francia-al-bivio/
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