Will the French let Macron destroy their party political system?

Emmanuel Macron is moving forward with his plan to destroy the French political scenery as we know it for centuries, from the times of the great Revolution of 1789. After having attracted a lot of deputies from the fading Socialist Party to his own, the one year old ‘Republic on the Move’ (REM) party, last Monday he announced that his Prime Minister will be Édouard Philippe, a deputy of the main center-right party, the ‘Republicans’. It’s the elections stupid! The Hexagon prepares full steam ahead for the June legislative elections, which are to take place in two rounds on 11th and 18th of next month, expected to elect the 577 members of the next National Assembly. Macron and his newborn party, without a good result in June, achieving absolute majority or anything close to it, will find it extremely difficult to accomplish his plans to redefine politics. From the left and the right Understandably, the socialist deputies who defect to Macron are seeking reelection and seem not to mind much about political boundaries or ideological consistency. As for Philippe, obviously he couldn’t reject an offer to become Prime Minister of France, even if he had to say goodbye to his colleagues of the center-right party and serve Macron’s fluid political ideology. Of course, there are more Republicans who squint towards RM. Around 21 of them issued a statement praising Philippe’s defection, by saying that the “hand extended by the president” should be reciprocated. Philippe himself has already started speaking the language of Macron and said “we should try something that had never been tried before.” Undoubtedly, the new French President will find many who are eager to get a place in the legislative, aboard his not so strong political tide. Despite the fact that the socialists and the center-right political establishment do not shine under the French sun, it’s equally true that neither does Macron, with his 25% in the first round of the election. Nonetheless, the two-round system of the French elections, where the two first candidates face each other in the second Sunday, may work to the benefit of the RM, the political party without political ideology. It’s as if Macron is giving birth to a new political class, but this is undertaken through a kind of Immaculate Conception. It cannot have been otherwise, since his over aged wife cannot conceive any natural children and he himself doesn’t seem to posses well developed and clean political sperm. He is a banker after all, a human amoeba nourished on the body of other living creatures. Enlightened by Macron Then, the enlightened by Macron, are given the gift of knowing right away what is good for country and people. This knowledge is not only unique, but is transmitted through a mysterious science, which produces only one ‘right’ solution to every problem. It’s like the very basic arithmetic. This is what Philippe meant when he said that “we should try something that had never been tried before”, as if the world hasn’t had the opportunity to observe other opportunists. Selling it as a brand new product is thought to be an additional advantage in the polls. Actually, this is Macron’s secret recipe: how to cheat many for a very brief time. In this respect the ‘cooking’ smells the same on both shores of the Atlantic Ocean. But how can there exist only ‘one solution’ to every social and economic problem and this solution is in the head of Macron only? How come and from the historic introduction of the democratic system in ancient Athens, the two main parties (the same as today, the conservative-aristocratic right and the folksy left) proposed different solutions to almost all issues? And how come that both, the two previous French presidents Socialist Francois Hollande and conservative Nicola Sarkozi, who both applied the unique and same ‘German’ recipe, failed so spectacularly? It’s the Germans again It’s the Germans who have been insisting that there is always only one ‘perfect’ or ‘scientific’ solution to every economic and political problem. We all know that this political kathexis of an entire nation has brought about ‘perfect’ and ‘total’ solutions, like Hitler some decades ago and the ‘fiscal brake’ in this century. And how is Macron to confront the German ‘uniqueness’, without using the French ‘exclusiveness’? But this dualism will lead to a new era of ‘national’ wars. Is this what Macron is up to? To replace the internal social conflict and the social class conflict with national confrontations? His ‘en marche’ ideology is easily turned into a chauvinist call. No? No doubt that Macron’s meta-politics conceal great dangers for democracy and the social structures in France and the whole of Europe. His proposal to tear down the established political system of left-right though, was endorsed only by one quarter of the French voters. Yet, if the two-round electoral system gives him enough power in the legislative next month, he will arrive at that. Not to forget, in Italy the destruction of the political system in the early 1990s was accomplished just by one man, prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro, in the ‘Mani Pulite’ corruption trials. Our party political system may not be the best invention of the world for a governance system, but protects society from the ‘ideas’ of one man or a well organized group of reformists. Whenever this system had been wiped out, in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, the devastating results were and are still felt all over the globe. It remains to be seen then if the French people will give Macron the legislative power, to have it his own way. In any case, during the next four months French, British and German voters are going to reshape the political environment in Europe. Hopefully, they will turn out legislative assemblies, which will avoid national egotism and take care of the needs of the many.