Consultations drag on, still no Prime Minister

After categorically rejecting the scenario of a left-wing government, Emmanuel Macron opened a “new cycle of consultations” on Tuesday to finally find a Prime Minister for France, in an increasingly tense political climate.

On the eve of the opening of the Paralympic Games and a few days before the start of the school year, France is still governed by an executive that has resigned, and this has been the case for more than 40 days now, something never seen since the end of the Second World War.

The head of state has resumed consultations in a very vague context with “those who want to work for the higher interest of the country,” he said only on Tuesday evening.

Representatives of the right-wing party Les Républicains (LR) are to be received on Wednesday, but neither the far right nor the far left have been invited. Some invited officials have refused to participate and “personalities” whose names have not been communicated are to be consulted, including former presidents.

These new discussions come the day after Mr Macron rejected a government of the New Popular Front (NFP, the left-wing alliance that came out on top in the legislative elections) and its candidate for Prime Minister, senior civil servant Lucie Castets.

The president has put forward “institutional stability” to rule out this option, with the other political blocs, from the centre to the far right, all promising to censure a government whose very left-wing programme is considered “dangerous”.

But the presidential decision, announced Monday evening in a long press release, has provoked the anger of the NFP, which is shouting “denial of democracy”.

La France Insoumise (LFI, radical left member of the left alliance with the socialists, the ecologists and the communists) called for a demonstration against “Emmanuel Macron’s coup” on September 7. Olivier Faure, the leader of the socialist party, announced that he would not go to the presidential palace of the Elysée for the new consultations, denouncing a “parody of democracy.”

“We are not going to continue this circus,” added environmentalist Marine Tondelier, while communist Fabien Roussel promised that the left would continue to “fight” and called on the French to mobilize.

Having come out on top in the July legislative elections, the left-wing coalition does not have an absolute majority in the National Assembly. But the two other blocs of the presidential camp and the extreme right are even less well off, making the search for compromise extremely complex.

President Macron had decided to dissolve the Assembly after his failure in the European elections on June 9, plunging the country into political confusion. His camp is now calling for “responsibility” and seeking to rally the socialists and isolate the radical left.

The resigning Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, thus advocated on BFMTV television on Tuesday a “broad coalition”, assuring that Macron’s supporters “could agree on a minimum” with the socialists to “allow France to function”.

The traditional right, for its part, refuses any coalition, without ruling out “voting for what goes in the right direction” in order “not to let France go into a wall”, according to one of its leaders, Valérie Pécresse. The extreme right, for its part, continues to accuse the French president of having “sown chaos”.

Unsurprisingly, the left-wing daily newspaper “Libération” castigated on Tuesday on its front page “the contempt” of the head of state. Its right-wing competitor “Le Figaro” considered that “France is avoiding a catastrophe” with the rejection of an NFP government, while stressing that “nothing is settled”.

The head of state does not have much time left to choose a prime minister, since a budget must be presented to the Assembly on October 1. And in the short term, his agenda is full. Emmanuel Macron must open the Paralympic Games on Wednesday evening, before flying to Serbia on Thursday afternoon.