Per Macron una bella bastonata : come sempre, c'è da imparare

Giuseppe Sandro Mela.

2018-03-16.

Alle elezioni suppletive di Pontoise Mr Macron ha preso una solenne bastonata nei denti. La sua candidata Isabelle Muller-Quory è stata battuta in modo rocambolesco da Antoine Savignant 51.45% versus 48.55%.

Fin qui, apparentemente, nulla di particolare: le elezioni si possono vincere e si possono perdere. Poi, elezioni più o meno locali non dovrebbero essere assunte a paradigma nazionale.

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Ma il caso di Pontoise è alquanto diverso dal solito. E lo è per moltissimi motivi, che ben val la pena di considerare a fondo.

«Pontoise est une commune française située en région Île-de-France, sur la rive droite de l'Oise, à environ vingt-cinq kilomètres au nord-ouest de Paris.

Chef-lieu du département du Val-d'Oise, elle accueille une sous-préfecture, la préfecture ne se situant pas au chef-lieu mais dans la ville voisine de Cergy, depuis la création de la nouvelle ville de Cergy-Pontoise, ce qui constitue un cas unique en France métropolitaine.

La ville abrite une des plus importantes cités judiciaires du pays et est le siège du diocèse de Pontoise, détaché de celui de Versailles en 1966. Ses habitants sont appelés les Pontoisiens.»

Alle elezioni politiche del 2017 in quella circoscrizione Mrs Isabelle Muller-Quory aveva ottenuto il 35.93% dei voti, contro il 17.75% di Mr Antoine Savignant.

Cosa mai era successo?

«On 14 November 2017, the Constitutional Council heard an appeal regarding the 2017 legislative elections within Val-d'Oise's 1st constituency by the three main defeated candidates, Antoine Savignat of The Republicans (LR), Denise Cornet of the National Front (FN), and Leïla Saïb of La France Insoumise (FI), who argued that the election should be invalidated because Michel Alexeef, selected as an substitute to elected deputy Isabelle Muller-Quoy of La République En Marche! (REM), previously served as a president of an employment tribunal within the constituency from January 2016 to January 2017, rendering him ineligible to run in a legislative election under the electoral code.

The Constitutional Council annulled the election of Muller-Quoy on 16 November 2017 under article L.O. 132 of the electoral code, and a by-election was held in the constituency in 2018 to fill the vacant seat. The legislative by-election was the first to be held since the election of Emmanuel Macron, and the first to be contested by a REM candidate.

Since the 2017 legislative elections, the Constitutional Council received 298 appeals within 122 constituencies; since 21 July, 242 of these were rejected, with another forty cases outstanding when the result in Val-d'Oise was annulled» [Fonte]

In poche parole, il partito La République En Marche! aveva presentato un sostituto che aveva retto la presidenza di un tribunale all'interno del distretto dal gennaio 2016 al gennaio 2017. Proprio una gran brutta svista. Quindi, la Corte Costituzionale aveva annullato i risultati delle elezioni e bandita un nuova tornata suppletiva, alla quale parteciparono i candidati della precedente. I relativi riportati sono riportati nella Tavola.

Cosa hanno detto le urne?

Antoine Savignat ha conseguito al ballottaggio il 51.45% dei voti contro i 48.55% della Isabelle Muller-Quoy, rovesciando nettamente i risultati emersi nel corso della prima tornata qualche settimana prima.

Per dirla in termini politicamente corretti:

«les électeurs de gauche se sont abstenus et les voix du FN se sont bien reportées sur LR».

Al contrario di quanto avvenuto nel corso delle elezioni parlamentari del 2017, la sinistra non ha votato la candidata di Mr Macron e gli elettori del Front National hanno votato il candidato dei Les Républicains.

Questa è una vera e propria rivoluzione politica che, se perdurasse nel tempo, porterebbe alla eliminazione politica di Mr Macron.

Né ci si dimentichi che tra breve in Francia si dovrà votare per le elezioni regionali, che poi molto locali non sono. Infatti i consiglieri regionali appartenenti alla sezione dipartimentale corrispondente al dipartimento in questione sono gli elettori dei 348 senatori del Senato Francese.

A conti fatti, il partito di Mr Macron non conquisterebbe nemmeno un consiglio regionale, se i Les Républicains ed il Front National facessero fronte comune, cosa del tutto possibile ed anche probabile.

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Un solo ultimo elemento.

L'astensionismo ha raggiunto

l'ottanta punto novantuno per cento (80.91%).

Ci si pensi bene, molto bene. In questa evenienza un gruppetto piccolo ma coeso potrebbe conquistarsi seggi e maggioranze.

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Nessuno intende intonare il De profundis per Mr Macron, ma al suo posto ci si andrebbe già a scegliere il loculo in cui poi ritirarsi.

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→ Reuters. 2018-03-14. Celebrated abroad, France's Macron struggles to find love at home

PONTOISE, France (Reuters) - He may have won election on a promise to be “neither of the left, nor the right”, but France’s mould-breaking young president is finding out that enacting broad welfare and labor reforms without a traditional power base has its price.

In a by-election last month, the voters of the tidy market town of Pontoise, west of Paris, made clear their disenchantment with Emmanuel Macron by stripping his party of a parliamentary seat won only eight months earlier.

Chief among their complaints is cuts to pensions - one of the ways the 40-year-old former investment banker has tried to pay for a reduction in taxes on salaries.

“For pensioners such as myself, it’s a real catastrophe. It’s been presented as ‘only fair’, but it’s an injustice, pure and simple,” said Yvan Mary, a 71-year-old pensioner standing outside the bakery on the main square.

“It’s not what people expected, including those who voted for him. There’s a sense of betrayal.”

Despite economic growth at its highest in six years, falling unemployment, and international newspapers and magazine covers celebrating “Macronmania”, Macron’s approval rating is now at its lowest since his election, at around 43 percent.

And nowhere is the frustration more acute than among France’s over-65s — the age group where Macron found the strongest support in the presidential vote last year.

In one survey, Macron suffered a nine-point fall in February alone, after most pensioners noticed a decline in their pension payments in January.

“I WON’T APOLOGIZE”

Sensing an opportunity after several failed attempts to challenge Macron’s reforms — which he says will galvanize a hidebound economy — the French unions have called a day of protests on behalf of pensioners on Thursday.

That will provide an indication of what unions hope will become a “spring of discontent”, with national strikes called for March 22 against the government’s plans to shake up totems of the French “social model”, such as jobs-for-life in public administration and the railways.

But as yet, Macron is showing no sign of following the path trodden by several French leaders before him by backing off from economic reforms under pressure from the streets.

“I know I’m asking for an effort from the oldest, that sometimes some of them grumble,” Macron said this month on the sidelines of a visit in the Champagne region, where a pensioner publicly complained to him.

“It doesn’t make me popular — but I won’t apologize for it,” he later told reporters, in the combative — some say arrogant — manner that has become his hallmark.

Elysee insiders say they always knew there would be no honeymoon, since Macron decided to launch a whirlwind of reforms targeting vested interests right from the start of his mandate.

Apart from pensioners, his moves to make hiring and firing easier and slash a wealth tax, while putting off increases in welfare spending, have alienated many of the left-leaning voters who switched to him from the mainstream Socialists in 2017, making up almost half his vote.

Just over a third of left-wing sympathizers now support Macron, according to an Ifop-Fiducial poll this month, compared with 43 percent of right-wing voters.

“It’s about his policy choices — but also his style,” Bruno Cautres, a sociologist at Paris’s Sciences-Po university who recently ran a focus group on perceptions of Macron.

“Some of the words used, even by some who voted for him, are particularly negative: ‘He’s haughty, contemptuous, he likes to show off in international conferences’,” he said.

LOGIC OF HONOR

But Cautres said Macron’s reformist zeal and his apparent resolve to break down “special privileges” have also run up against a deeper, more entrenched characteristic of the French psyche.

It is what French sociologist Philippe d’Iribarne called the “logic of honor” - the pride French feel about the system of rights and duties particular to each working group, inherited from the pre-Revolution era.

“In France, the feeling of having your honor besmirched is one of the strongest impediments to reforms,” Cautres said, adding that it was especially ingrained among the 5 million public sector workers.

“It’s a French cultural trait, forged by history, which is very important. You can’t reform the public administration just by using managerial arguments, as Macron is doing.”

In the medieval alleys of Pontoise, which has swung back and forth between left and right in recent decades, they put their view of the young centrist, as he would have it, more bluntly.

“To him, it’s: ‘I do what I say — live with it. Whether you agree or disagree — you voted for me, so that’s how it is,’” said 61-year-old Anita Deliers, a retired administrator. “He’s too much of a neoliberal for my liking.”