"Secret committee", "bunker", "solitary confinement" ... The oppositions, from the left in particular, very quickly took up the issue raised by the Defense Councils on the health situation chaired by Emmanuel Macron to make it one of the privileged themes of their reviews.
If the rebels, environmentalists and socialists are not in unison to criticize the methods of management of the fight against the pandemic - on vaccines in particular - all their leaders have only one voice, on the other hand, for denounce the multiplication, since the start of the Covid-19 crisis, of these very specific decision-making bodies.
And, through them, what the left considers to be an authoritarian drift of Macronian power.
The most virulent is Jean-Luc Mélenchon, holding, since his last presidential campaign, an institutional revolution, which advocates the establishment of a Sixth Republic.
“Why has such an invention ended up replacing virtually all constitutional decision-making bodies?
Asks the member for Bouches-du-Rhône.
“Our democracy cannot be sealed off!”
For Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has already embarked on the race for the Elysee Palace, there is no doubt that these health defense councils aim to "judicially protect" the Head of State and his government team and "put everyone safe ”.
They are also the sign, for the leader of the Insoumis, of an attack on democracy.
“The composition of the board is at its discretion.
But Macron can add or remove whoever he wants.
Everything is as it pleases, he sums up.
The dream for the will to omnipotence typical of the Macronist presidential monarchy ”.
Olivier Faure also denounces a completely new exercise of power.
"We have here a completely unheard-of constitutional situation," said the First Secretary of the Socialist Party.
“We are in a regime of virtual suspension of freedoms in a whole series of areas, framed by nothing
[…].
There is an
illiberal
and liberticidal
drift
.
"And to add in a recent interview with the Parisian - Today in France," crisis situations - health or security - should not be used as a pretext for permanent deprivation.
There is an increasingly personal way of exercising power, of despising intermediary bodies, of bypassing Parliament.
With the health crisis, the president decides alone in the bunker of the Defense Council.
Our democracy cannot be sealed off like this!
"
More moderate, Yannick Jadot, targets Emmanuel Macron, who "decides alone with a few advisers" on the measures to be taken.
But the ecologist MEP also calls for "to set up a Health Security Council over time, but with the political forces, the living forces of the country."
It is only together that we will give ourselves the means to effectively combat this virus.
"
"There are instances: respecting them is better"
On the right, the opposition is much more measured.
Heard by the Senate in September 2020, as part of the management of the health crisis, the president (DVD) of Hauts-de-France, Xavier Bertrand, quipped on the subject.
"The High Defense Council is what is replacing the Council of Ministers at the moment, is it?
"Asked Xavier Bertrand, before alerting however:" It gives the feeling that the Council of Ministers is no longer there and that it is now the High Defense Council which decides everything.
There are institutions, there are authorities: respecting them is better ”.
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Senator (LR) Philippe Bas had also questioned the central place taken by this decision-making body, believing that it was competent to meet for defense questions, but not necessarily for health matters.