A keen observer of French political life and columnist for FigaroVox, Maxime Tandonnet has notably published
André Tardieu.
The misunderstood
(Perrin, 2019) and
Georges Bidault: from the Resistance to French Algeria
(Perrin, 2022).
“The result of the 2022 elections must imperatively prevail over the polls and over “the street
“: this statement dominates the official, political and media discourse, to justify the will of the current power and its allies to carry out, whatever happens, the emblematic pension reform.
Thus, postponing the retirement age to 64, derived from Mr. Macron's campaign promise to raise this age to 65, would be set in stone.
Such reasoning clashes with the initial spirit of the Fifth Republic.
In the mind of its founder, Charles de Gaulle, the election was not worth a kind of blank check for the political leaders, whose legitimacy to reform the country rested, beyond the initial ballot, on the preserved popular confidence. .
Hence the successive referendums in which the General pledged his confidence and the continuation of his mandate.
Read alsoFor François-Xavier Bellamy, pension reform is a counterpart promised to the European Union
The facts back him up.
It is a profound mistake to claim that by electing President Macron in 2022, a majority of French people (globally) gave him a green light to implement 65 or 64.
The 2022 presidential election took place without a real campaign, without the slightest substantive debate, between the Covid and the outbreak of war in Ukraine.
The choice of many voters of the current president was dominated by the fear of seeing Mr. Mélenchon or Mrs. le Pen reach the Élysée.
Admittedly, at one point in the campaign, to pull the rug out from under the right-wing candidate, the candidate-president announced a postponement of the retirement age to 65 (while a few months earlier he castigated this measure as
a hypocrite
).
But it is wrong to say that voters (as a whole) had this measure in mind when they voted in an extremely anxiety-provoking global context.
As for the main message of the legislative elections that followed, with 46% participation, the refusal to grant an absolute majority to the Head of State showed on the contrary a popular desire not to grant the President a blank check, including over the age of 65.
In this standoff between the ruling elites and the people, it is the people who are basically right.
Maxime Tandonnet
The current political sequence is dramatic for French democracy.
The flagship measure of 64 years is immensely unpopular and rejected by three quarters of French people and nine tenths of working people as all opinion polls prove, confirming a reality that everyone can perceive in their daily life.
However, under bad pretexts, the ruling class gives the impression of taking no account of it.
She sinks into an attitude that manifests a sort of flight into contempt and disconnection.
Worse: in this standoff between the ruling elites and the people, it is the people who are basically right.
The 64 years are absolutely useless given the rule of 43 annuities.
Their only effect will be to
obliging certain categories of workers who started before the age of 21 to work for over 43 years, therefore having little education (and escaping the derogations provided for long careers).
The reproach of uselessness and injustice towards this totemic measure is proven.
The image of an obtuse political class, refusing to listen to the country, and stuck in indifference while popular France sinks into a new galley – the blocking of the economy and transport – is devastating.
According to the dominant discourse, the president "
could no longer govern if he renounced this measure
".
However, whether he gives in or not, the already fragile confidence will be definitively broken with the country, seriously hampering the rest of his mandate.
And almost the entire political class will come out the loser of this showdown between itself and the Nation.
The official leaders of the LR right have seriously compromised themselves with the presidential majority in a logic of arrogance on the pretext of sticking to a program which, on four occasions (presidential and legislative), has contributed to their defeat.
La Nupes was shipwrecked in excess.
This social crisis has also shown the limits of the "de-demonization" of the RN, with which the unions reject any contact, a party that will never manage to embody the appeasement and reconciliation that France so badly needs.
In this debacle which perhaps marks the paroxysm of political decomposition and seems to open onto an abyss, only the “slingers” of the LR right could possibly pull out of the game. They are about twenty of the young LR generation.
They understood (unlike the party leaders) that beyond the emblematic postponement to 64 (once again useless and unjust) there was a showdown between the "leading elites" embodied by the Macron presidency and the Popular France, the world of work.
Provided, however, that they do not in turn sink into megalomania, solitary pretension and the cult of personality.
They are about twenty of the young LR generation.
They understood (unlike the party leaders) that beyond the emblematic postponement to 64 (once again useless and unjust) there was a showdown between the "leading elites" embodied by the Macron presidency and the Popular France, the world of work.
Provided, however, that they do not in turn sink into megalomania, solitary pretension and the cult of personality.
They are about twenty of the young LR generation.
They understood (unlike the party leaders) that beyond the emblematic postponement to 64 (once again useless and unjust) there was a showdown between the "leading elites" embodied by the Macron presidency and the Popular France, the world of work.
Provided, however, that they do not in turn sink into megalomania, solitary pretension and the cult of personality.
