A "Sixth Republic" in France?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charottetown, PEI] Guardian

The triumph of many previously untested candidates who were personally selected by Emmanuel Macron, the newly elected president of France, in the two-round parliamentary election of June 11 and 18, demonstrates clearly that the French political order has collapsed.

The candidates of his newly formed party, La République en Marche (The Republic on the Move) finished first in 308 of 577 districts. With his allies the Mouvement Démocrate, he will control 350 seats.

The Republicans, one of the two parties that controlled France until 2017, came in second, winning 113 seats, while the Socialists, once a bedrock of French political life, were crushed, with just 29 seats.

Far leftists and Communists took 27 seats, and Marine Le Pen’s National Front a mere nine.

As in 1958, when the decaying Fourth Republic, beset by defeats in foreign colonial wars, particularly in Algeria, gave way to Charles de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic, Macron’s improbable victory in May has in effect created a “sixth” republic. 

Of course de Gaulle was a military hero who had led the Free French forces against Nazi Germany, so Macron’s victory was far more amazing. He is after all, a 39 year old technocrat who was virtually unknown a year ago.

As president, the haughty de Gaulle claimed to be above party politics and to some extent patterned himself after Napoleon, but in order to get legislation passed in the National Assembly, various so-called Gaullist parties were created to do his bidding.

They, along with the old Socialists, have virtually disintegrated, and Macron, who claims he transcends traditional political boundaries and represents no particular ideology, now has his own “Macroniste” caucus in parliament.

Most have little political experience or allegiance to the traditional parties. More than half have never held political office and their average age is under 50.  

They will serve, as de Gaulle’s groups did, as a “king’s” party, beholden to the president – the same way the United Russia Party champions Vladimir Putin’s policies in the Russian Duma.

As a globalist, Macron is of course the darling of the European Union bureaucrats in Brussels and the so-called “Davos” neoliberals who run transnational corporations and loath nationalism. France is now in their hands.

Their goal was to create a large, single, center-left, technocratic political party that would crush the old political parties. It was created little more than a year ago and its name tells the tale.

As soon as Macron defeated Marine Le Pen of the far right National Front in the presidential contest, the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, spoke about “hope for Europe.” 

A week later, Macron went to Berlin, met German Chancellor Angela Merkel and told her that he sought a rapid “strengthening of the Union.”

Now that Macron has formed a “Republican Front,” it has left little space on the political spectrum beyond the far left and the NF. 

Such an unstable situation doesn’t bode well for French democracy. Some caveats regarding this outcome:

The overall turnout of 49 per cent in the first round was extraordinarily low. Of those who voted, the results saw Macron’s party win 28.2 per cent of the vote, the centre right Republicans 15.7 per cent, while the National Front scored 13.2 per cent, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far left 11 per cent, and the Socialists 7.4 per cent.

Since only the top two candidates in each district entered the second round, which had an even lower turnout, at under 43 per cent, Macron, with his allies, will control more than half of the seats though he commands the support of little more than a quarter of the electorate.

Should Macron lose popularity and eventually suffer defeat in a future presidential race, what will become of his deputies? 

As an advocate of liberal austerity policies and rule by EU banker-bureaucrats, his policies are bound to cause major resentment all too soon.

And does this make Marine Le Pen a de facto leader of the opposition and the only realistic alternative? Or will some other anti-establishment figure arise? Stormy waters may lie ahead.