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"Emmanuel Macron sails on sight and tries to save face"

2021-03-02T14:46:38.444Z


FIGAROVOX / INTERVIEW - Emmanuel Macron said that it would take another four to six weeks to “hold” before the restrictions related to Covid are relaxed. For Arnaud Benedetti, professor at the Sorbonne, this statement is more of the president's desire to save time, ...


Arnaud Benedetti is associate professor at Paris-Sorbonne University and editor-in-chief of the political and parliamentary review.

FIGAROVOX.-Emmanuel Macron announced that it would take another four to six weeks.

Does he pose as a defender of freedoms in the face of the recommendations of his ministers and the scientific council?

Arnaud BENEDETTI.-

Above all, he wants to save time by counting that his ridge line strategy between beaded constraints (territorialization, differentiated temporization with confinements on Weekends where the epidemic pressure is strong, curfew) and an opening relative of the company produces its results.

His bet is a synthesis between health and the economy, a middle position.

He no longer wants to be the chairman of the confinement, but he cannot be the chairman of the liberation either.

The reality is that the context of its strategy remains the same as it has been since the start of the pandemic: it treats the symptoms but not the causes.

For lack of hospital and vaccine resources, he favors an in-between, distancing himself from the mandarin injunction recommending a toughening of measures and nevertheless holding a position which continues to press the company in its daily functioning.

The pressure on his shoulders is all the stronger as some countries seem to extricate themselves from the epidemic, at least to control it.

It is the rhetoric of "

holding on

", of a continuous state of siege that predominates, with the hope both to save face of one's choice and to succeed in loosening the grip of the virus in the short term.

But in view of the level of constraints weighing on the French, he can not claim to be the defender of public freedoms which are and which appear as necessarily in prolonged dormancy and frankly worrying for several months.

The worst would be to get used to a situation and gradually internalize it as a norm.

Can this communication pay politically?

Is it effective?

Only the result will count.

Communication is always a bet that only politics can reinforce or not.

Emmanuel Macron undoubtedly has the intuition that he is playing his future in his ability to get out of the crisis as quickly as possible.

The pressure on its shoulders is all the stronger as some countries, not all it is true, seem to be extricating themselves from the epidemic, at least controlling it, if not completely exceeding it.

The comparison for the moment, notwithstanding the will of the executive to relativize the dysfunctions of its management by insisting on what is happening elsewhere, does not work in France's favor.

The risk of course for the Head of State would be to be forced to raise the level of constraints in the days to come.

And this hypothesis would not fail to be interpreted as a failure of its policy.

What is most lacking today is visibility, a perspective, an ability to project oneself.

Is this a courageous position on the part of the president?

What is most lacking today, and many observers have rightly noted it, is visibility, a perspective, a capacity to project oneself.

When the Prime Minister makes a press point, he makes a progress report, he is the commentator of factual data, and announces that announcements will be made ... a week later.

An atmosphere of procrastination necessarily develops, of lack of feedback, which also harms confidence.

When the President, at the turn of a question put to him by a young student on the curfew, replies that we still have to “

bite the bullet

” for a few weeks, this spontaneity, as natural as it is, is not not likely to reassure the outcome of the situation, especially when the contamination figures remain high, the curfew measures do not necessarily seem convincing, and the vaccination campaign is currently taking place slowly, compared to other states.

Read also:

"Emmanuel Macron will now be judged on his vaccination policy"

All this is not read as courageous, but as uncertain, as if we were sailing in sight, without an agenda that could foresee an end to this crisis.

The latter infuses doubt in a large part of the veins of public opinion.

It is this deposit that irrigates many perceptions and representations.

Only a short-term turnaround would allow Emmanuel Macron to capitalize.

The time of the epidemic if it continues with its procession of economic and social difficulties, depressive atmospheres, moral fatigue, psychological grayness, inevitably plays a factor of corrosion against the executive which appears much more mobile, although sometimes confused, in his communication than in his action.

The risk for Emmanuel Macron is to see his image and that of his mandate, associated exclusively with exhausting, sad, unhappy moments.

Is this a way to respond to his political opponents and cut short, for example, the proposals of the mayor of Paris last week?

Emmanuel Macron's luck is not due to providence but to the collective perception that others would not do better.

This guarantees him a form of indulgence as by default.

From this point of view,

Anne Hidalgo's

retropedalée

proposal will

reinforce this feeling.

The Mayor of Paris appeared approximate, politician, inconsistent through a coup as little thoughtful as he wanted to be "

trapping

" for the executive.

To read also:

Arnaud Benedetti: "Can we communicate without infantilizing?"

Likewise, the image of local elected officials should not be overvalued, a figure somewhat agreed to in my opinion in media readings of the crisis.

Their local contradictions, as we have seen on the occasion of the hardening of sanitary conditions in the Alpes-Maritimes, may in fact help to strengthen the legitimacy of central action.

Especially since the egalitarian French culture is to raise the head towards the State, much more than to be satisfied with the local level which can potentially reactivate the feeling of feudalism not devoid of political ulterior motives.

The risk for Emmanuel Macron does not therefore come immediately from political, local and national competition, but in proportion as the ordeal continues to see his image and that of his mandate associated exclusively with exhausting, sad, unhappy moments.

To be the statesman of a leaden, boring, cornerized era.

He who was the candidate for optimism in 2017 would be forced to confront a country that is even less so today than yesterday ...

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-03-02

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