Certainly!
Surprising from start to finish, this presidential election will also be one of paradoxes. At first glance, we can already point out four of them… and big ones!
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The five-year term was marked by strong and almost permanent unpopularity of the President of the Republic and his Prime Ministers due to, as was said in the streets and by the dissenters, their economic and social policy, of which the Labor Law was both the instrument and the symbol. However, the election of Emmanuel Macron is that of, not just a simple enforcer, but the inspirer of this policy: should the El Khomri law not have been called Macron before an Elysee veto? I know voters who protested against the law before voting for its author… Paradox! Paradox!
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The two victors of the first round end — at least personally — the presidential sequence in a bad position. Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon achieved historic scores for their respective political families. However, MLP erased in two hours of a disastrous debate five years of “de-demonization”. As a result, the recycling of the Italian-style far-right drifts away. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for his part, through his ambiguous stance when giving voting instructions for the 2nd round, has lost much of his credit and weakened the prospective leadership of the dissenting left that seemed promised to him.
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Right-wing and left-wing voters indulged themselves during their respective primaries (“I voted according to my convictions,” we heard them say!). But in doing so, they chose candidates who were not very presidential. Even before his legal issues, Fillon, due to the radical nature of his project, had already driven away many moderate right-wing voters. As for Hamon, he had a program to win a Socialist Congress, not to preside over France. Moderate left-wing voters felt excluded, and this was reflected in the ballots. Moral of the story: by wanting a candidate firmly to the right and one firmly to the left, the primary voters facilitated the election of a… centrist!
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The election of Emmanuel Macron would mark the advent of a new era in French politics. This is not false, but its nature also risks proving to be paradoxical. While En Marche clearly has in its sights the advent of a 6th Republic, political fragmentation and a potential cohabitation (light version with a relative majority, hard version in the case of a minority) risk sending us back to the 4th Republic and its fragile coalitions.
None of these paradoxes really worry me, but let us note all the same that with this presidential election, Marianne has revealed herself to be mischievous…
by Patrick Mottard
