Pandemic forces France to postpone elections for the second time in a year

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday at the Elysee Palace, DPA via Europa Press / Europa Press

France will postpone an election for the second time since the coronavirus pandemic broke out a year ago.

The French Parliament is preparing to approve the law that will convene the regional and departmental laws initially planned for this March in June.

The opposition fears that the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, will try to postpone them again, perhaps until after the presidential and legislative elections in 2022, if the pandemic does not resolve soon.

Macron has already postponed the second round of the municipal elections from March to June 2020 due to the health alarm and confinement.

The Senate, controlled by the conservative Republican opposition, adopted the bill on Tuesday to postpone the renewal of the regional and departmental councils and regional assemblies of Corsica, Guyana and Martinique.

Then the National Assembly, where Macron's party and its allies are in the majority, must ratify the postponement, expectedly in the coming days.

This law is an initiative of the French Government based on a report drawn up by the veteran conservative politician and former president of the Constitutional Council Jean-Louis Debré.

The report sought a balance between the imperative to respect electoral appointments and the democratic process, and the "exceptionally grave circumstances" arising from the pandemic.

“From the report [Debré],” justified the Council of Ministers, “it follows that the health situation and the measures adopted to alleviate the covid-19 pandemic do not allow an electoral campaign to be carried out that precedes elections organized in the March in the right conditions to guarantee the good information of the voters, the equality of opportunities of the candidates and the sincerity of the vote ”.

The debate was in the fine print.

First, what facilities will be given to people who, either sick or still threatened by disease, cannot move?

The danger is abstention, which in the municipal elections of 2020, after the first confinement, reached a record figure in these elections of 58%.

The answer will be to expand the proxy vote.

Under normal circumstances, one person can cast a proxy vote for another person.

Now there will be two, according to the bill.

The other, more thorny debate is whether to leave a door open to postpone the regional and departmental elections again beyond June if, by then, adequate sanitary conditions are still not in place.

The Government's proposal suggested that "no later than April 1", the Covid-19 Scientific Committee must present a report to Parliament on "health risks linked to the electoral campaign and scrutiny."

What if the opinion is negative?

The suspicion, in the opposition, is that, given the poor electoral prospects for the candidates of Macron's party, he will take advantage of it to postpone the elections again until 2022.

"Those who entrusted me with this mission [the French Government] wanted to postpone them much later, until after the presidential election of 2022," Debré revealed a few days ago in an appearance before the Senate.

When you specified that you had ruled out this option.

And he exclaimed: "We cannot confine the expression of democracy in this way without creating insurmountable political problems!"

"There is no hidden project of the Government regarding the calendar", replied the Minister of Citizenship, Marlène Schiappa.

To avoid a new postponement, in any case, the Senate has specified that the scientific opinion of April will serve to determine the sanitary measures in the June elections, but not to postpone them.

The pandemic has already forced an electoral postponement in France.

On March 16, the day after the first round of municipal elections took place, Macron announced the first national confinement and suspended until June the second round scheduled for the 22 of the same month.

Poor prospects for macronism

Regional elections in France threaten to inflict a new defeat on The Republic on the Move (LREM), Emmanuel Macron's party.

The 2020 municipalities already revealed underlying problems for LREM, such as the scarce territorial implantation and the personalism of the leader, which has not left room for other front-line leaders to emerge.

The scenario could be repeated now.

Some heavyweights who might have come forward, such as Foreign Ministers Jean-Yves Le Drian and Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, have expressed reluctance to embark on an uncertain campaign.

The danger, for the president, is that the elections will become a showcase for potential rivals in the 2022 presidential elections.