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Barnier’s appointment: the left denounces a “stolen” election and a “regime crisis”
“The election was stolen from the French,” denounced the rebellious leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon on Thursday after the announcement of the nomination of Michel Barnier as Prime Minister, while the leader of the socialists Olivier Faure considered that “we are entering a crisis of regime.” Discovering “a Prime Minister who is appointed with the permission and perhaps on the suggestion of the National Rally,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon called in a video posted on social networks “for the most powerful mobilization possible” on Saturday, just after the announcement of the choice of the former minister and former right-wing European Commissioner Michel Barnier for Matignon. Olivier Faure describes on X a “democratic denial taken to its peak: a Prime Minister from the party that came in 4th position and who did not even participate in the Republican Front”. Like its other partners in the New Popular Front (NFP), the socialist group in the Assembly states in a press release that it will censure the Barnier government, which “has neither political legitimacy nor republican legitimacy”. Emmanuel Macron made his choice after 60 days of waiting, and a succession of names mentioned, after refusing to nominate Lucie Castets, the candidate of the NFP, the left-wing alliance that came out on top, but without an absolute majority, in the legislative elections. “The president has sent the Republican Front packing, he has only made eyes at the far right, he has looked ever further to the right on the political arc”, also deplored in a video on X the national secretary of the Ecologists Marine Tondelier, “extremely worried about what has just happened”. The leader of the communists Fabien Roussel, for his part, decried in a press release “the choice of the right to continue the policy of the president” and its “clear” objective: “the construction of a coalition with the deputies of his camp who was defeated and the complicity of the National Rally to support the policy pursued”. “It is the certainty that nothing will change”, also notes the ex-insoumis deputy François Ruffin on X, asking: “Is Michel Barnier going to go back on retirement at 64? Re-establish the ISF? No, of course not: Macron chose him on these conditions. So we will censor him”. For the ecologist deputy Sandrine Rousseau, Emmanuel Macron is “on the verge of transforming democracy into a vast puppet show. This will have a cost, and undoubtedly a high one”. By appointing Michel Barnier, “the president refuses to respect popular sovereignty and the choice made at the ballot box”, judged the leader of the rebellious deputies Mathilde Panot, denouncing an “unacceptable coup in a democracy” caz-tg-ldp/jmt/sp
