Gabriel Robin is an essayist. He has notably published
Le non du peuple
(Éditions du Cerf, 2019).
“We are relearning how to become a nation.
We had gradually become accustomed to being a society of free men, we are a nation of united citizens, "Emmanuel Macron said yesterday after announcing that 20 metropolises would be hit with a curfew to prevent a second epidemic wave of coronavirus.
Will we therefore have to get used to being a society of individuals deprived of their freedoms?
The president's wording raises questions, as does the battery of measures taken.
Solidarity is not at odds with freedom, as the national motto reminds us.
Individual freedoms cannot be opposed to the warm fraternity of the national community which is, at bottom, our extended family.
We are free but called to fulfill our duty of solidarity.
This is what makes France great.
To read also:
"The French identity will be reborn when we are again a great power"
Great and ancient democracy, France seems to fall into a permanent state of emergency where the presidential figure has airs of "father the nation" that should be followed unfailingly, without even attempting to outline the smallest sign of protest.
We must obviously fight against the virus and protect the hospital sector from saturation of intensive care services.
The French are aware of this, demonstrating since March of this year exemplary civility despite the admonitions inflicted on the population in lengthy editorials and television broadcasts.
The French scrupulously apply what is asked of them.
They wear their masks, including in deserted streets.
They limit their social contacts.
They close shop, even when ruin threatens.
However, they still have the right to think, to see that the crisis has been handled in a strange way and that they have been poorly explained why they had to make such sacrifices.
Above all, it will be difficult for them to understand the logic and consistency of the presidential measures.
Individual freedoms cannot be opposed to the warm fraternity of the national community which is, at bottom, our extended family.
In France - unlike in most major Western democracies - the Head of State can decide alone and without consulting the national representation on the establishment of an arbitrary curfew without justifying it by evidence. precise, without even publicly mentioning the classic theory of "exceptional circumstances" taken from the Heyriès case law of June 28, 1918 (the Council of State then admitted that in times of crisis, or even in times of war, the public authorities have powers exceptionally extended to ensure the continuity of public services).
Close in the spirit of the theories of the German jurist Carl Schmitt, for whom unforeseen events can lead to suspend the common law, this theory wants that the administration can "in certain circumstances of place and time, free itself from legality ".
At the risk of losing its legitimacy?
How indeed to justify this inclination "metro, work, sleep" that the speech of the executive takes?
Would it be more dangerous to have a beer alone on the terrace at 9:30 p.m. than to take the Paris metro at rush hour?
Which exceptional circumstances have become the norm with the state health emergency law in force since March 23.
To read also:
Fabrice Luchini: "I think of all the theaters for which it is a death sentence"
The inequality of treatment that exists between the catering and entertainment professions and the rest of the professional bodies is absolutely staggering.
Thousands of bosses and tens of thousands of their employees are placed on technical unemployment, perhaps soon ruined and with them a way of life.
We are therefore assigned to night residence.
Will we still be able to smoke a cigarette at the foot of our building or stretch our legs?
It just doesn't make sense.
We are paying for the state's inability to put in place a clear “test-trace-isolate” system as requested.
The WHO itself has explained that containment, or whoever does not say its name like what was decided yesterday, was not a viable long-term solution but rather an emergency device.
He justified himself in March in the face of the unknown, he is not justified today.
The confinement was justified in March in the face of the unknown, it is not justified today
Today, rumors swirl about a postponement of the departmental and regional elections of March 2021 to the Greek calendar, that is to say after the presidential election.
It must be said that the presidential majority has only a limited chance of winning regions, polls even showing that it is unable to lead a single one without alliances.
On the other hand, it has full freedom to decide alone in the National Assembly thanks to an anachronistic voting system, which like the place given to the president in our institutions gives to see a national representation which in no way represents the country in its ideological reality. and aborts all possibilities of political consensus.
In our latitudes, we govern by force.
A force which borders on the strictest authoritarianism while pretending to act for "our good", for the "whole nation".
Will we always be listened to in the world, where the Turkish and Chinese autocrats are emboldened, while we restrict public and individual freedoms to such an extent?
It is not said that we will become again what we were without a radical aggiornamento of our political practices.
The political class is like its institutions;
out of phase.
The result is there before our eyes.
The population is defiant, threatening to split into micro-communities.
By losing freedoms, we are not preserving freedom: we collectively maintain the resilience of a state that is losing itself and that is losing us.
To read also:
Curfew: "Freedom and responsibility become words without value in France"
The democratic state of emergency involves profound upheavals.
Emergency laws can no longer be the norm.
The president must not be able to do what he wants without referring to the national representation.
National representation must necessarily be pluralist, which is accompanied by a change in the voting system.
Members of the National Assembly must therefore be elected on a proportional basis to take into account the political diversity of the country.
As for the Senate, its vocation as a chamber of the territories must be fully affirmed.
Its members could be on the one hand the presidents of the departmental councils and of the twenty most important metropolitan agglomerations and on the other hand elected by direct universal suffrage in two rounds in large constituencies.
Individual freedoms must be preserved and confidence given to the French.