Will the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) last until 2012? Some executives, members, and supporters of the UMP are openly questioning this, far beyond the recent appointment of the Deputy Mayor of Nice, who was brought in at the request of the President of the Republic, to complete a team of Deputy Secretaries-General already formed by the Minister of Labor, Xavier Bertrand, and his colleague, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, State Secretary for Ecology. A series of appointments, discreetly acknowledged on Rue La Boétie, intended both to guide the official Secretary-General Patrick Devedjian and to closely watch the barely concealed ambitions of the UMP group leader in the National Assembly, Jean-François Copé, leader of young rebellious and uncompromising parliamentarians in the “rupture”. “We are not kids, nor are we meant to become spokespersons for the Élysée,” reported one of them to the daily Libération.
From simple formulas and small phrases, from “distancing” to “reminders of difference”, it is becoming difficult for the Élysée to ignore the multiplication of these worrying signals, hence probably the presidential will to energetically regain control. While the turbulence caused by the younger generations can be easily curbed, it is different for the party leaders who, so to speak, are moving from words to action. Another serious indication of the malaise is their reinvestment in former structures capable of providing them with a platform and audience they feel deprived of within the UMP.
The statements of UMP Vice-President Jean-Pierre Raffarin on “the excessive reward for criticism,” “the overabundance of leadership,” and the risks to the “diversity” of the movement, as commentary on Christian Estrosi’s return to the leadership, markedly contradict what the former Secretary of State for Overseas Territories describes as a “natural place within his political family”. When he considers that a “monolithic UMP is a fragile UMP”, Senator of Vienne further fuels the views of Michèle Alliot-Marie, who has decided to relaunch “Le Chêne”, a political reflection movement she created in 2006. Considering that “Gaullism never was a single head on a single line”, the Minister of the Interior is preparing to make public her “Charter” on this theme so that her “values” can be “loud and clear”. A way of saying that the UMP does not give her complete satisfaction in this area. A “Gaullism that is not dead” either, according to former Prime Minister Alain Juppé, who is determined to voice his “concerns” about the defense policy developed by the President. The Mayor of Bordeaux relies on the Foundation for Political Innovation. Founded in 2002 by Jérôme Monod as a think tank for the UMP, this structure was sidelined in 2004 with the arrival of Nicolas Sarkozy at the head of the party. More modestly but in the same spirit, Housing Minister Christine Boutin wishes to reinvigorate her formation created in 2002, the Forum of Social Republicans, also lamenting that the UMP is “retracing the features of the former RPR”, dashing hopes of “guaranteeing the freedom of expression for all sensibilities”. This approach is imitated by the National Center of Independents and Peasants (CNI), whose National Council has declared its intention to regain “full independence” from the majority party.
While Nicolas Sarkozy had endeavored, during his election campaign, to meet the aspirations of many militants for the UMP to become a modern political formation open to civil society, it is clear a year after his election that the old symptoms of the French conservative party are hard to shake off. Certainly, this is not yet the final farewell. But the persistence of the President of the Republic’s weak popularity can only awaken ambitions that have so far been dormant. Accused by some within the UMP of behaving like a “Caesar”, Nicolas Sarkozy can nevertheless remain confident: it is still too early to wonder who will dare to play the symbolic role of Brutus.
