Why the next French President won’t be so powerful anymore
And why the next Prime Minister will be more important
The French Presidential election is the mother of all elections in this country. Every five years, with a turnout that often reach more than 80%, it’s a very popular democratic moment.
But this election is getting crazier every day. As with every other election around the world, there is a new layer of complexity that forbid predictions.
In the last week of the campaign, 4 candidates are within 3% one of each other:
- Jean-Luc Mélenchon (left wing): 20%
- François Fillon (right): 20%
- Marine Le Pen (right wing): 22%
- Emmanuel Macron (center): 23%
There are many surprises in this. It’s bad news for Marine Le Pen who is not certain to reach the second round, and looks unlikely to win it. It’s great news for Jean-Luc Mélenchon who was considered a small candidate. It’s good news also for François Fillon who is making a comeback after several weeks of scandals. And it’s interesting to see that the favorite is Emmanuel Macron, someone that most French people had never heard of before 2 years ago.
But many people forget that this election is not the only one to be decided this year. Two months later, in June, French people will also elect the members of their Parliament, whose majority will decide who will be Prime Minister.
Usually, the Parliamentary election acts as a sort of confirmation for the Presidential election. But without a clear popular support in favor of the next President, this time won’t be so easy.
The French President is supposed to be strong, but only if he benefits from a strong popular vote. Jacques Chirac was elected with 20,84% in 1995, and 19,88% in 2002 but the right had several candidates and was still around 40% in total. Initially credited of 3% in the polls, François Hollande was elected after a complicated primary that saw the surprise outing of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Without a clear popular support from 2012 to 2017, he had five very difficult years, created an internal opposition and failed to pass a number of bills that he claimed to be important.
The next President will be in a worse situation. He won’t have more than 8 millions people supporting him over 47 millions of voters. As Patrick Weil has it : “he will be elected despite his program or himself, only because voters will want to save the Republic. He will be a President without a mandate”.
The real French Chief of State of the next five years might well be the upcoming Prime Minister whose name will be decided by the upcoming Parliamentary election. And it’s incredibly possible that he or she won’t belong to the same political party than the President.
Thus, we would have a cohabitation, but with a strong Prime Minister and a weak President. It wouldn’t be a first since we already had the cohabitation of Jacques Chirac and François Mitterand from 1986 to 1988, and then the cohabitation of Lionel Jospin and Jacques Chirac from 1997 to 2002.
But it would be the first time the elected President does not even have the time to assert his authority. He would be weakened from the start. Power would switch from his staff at the Elysee Palace to the houses of the Parliament, and even to the judiciary and to civil society. He won’t have a majority. There is a possibility that the next French President won’t be the head of the Gods.
Thus, the real question about French politics should not be who the next President will be, but who will be the next Prime Minister?
