For the first time France has a National Assembly divided roughly in thirds without a majority able to name a future prime minister and form a government. Indeed the latest leftist candidate withdrew after failing to obtain a consensus from the leftist New Popular Front (NPF) coalition. Coalitions and alliances, let alone parties, all lack the 289 seats required for an absolute majority that may form a government and choose a prime minister without support from outside its own ranks. The NPF coalition secured 182, Macron’s centrist “ensemble” coalition 168, and the far-right National Rally (RN) 144 seats. It is unclear who the new prime minister will be, and how a new government will be formed.
At the Bastille Day celebrations on Sunday, demonstrators supporting the NPF and the party that leads it, France Unbowed (LFI), gathered at the Place de la Nation to demand that they should be allowed to form a government and name a prime minister. “The disruptive left is ready to govern,” commented Eric Coquerel, an LFI member of Parliament in a post on X. The coalition believes it should be allowed to name a prime minister on its own as the biggest unit in parliament, even if it lacks an absolute majority, and its members have called on President Macron to allow them to name a prime minister. Also on X, LFI MP Manon Aubry said, “the president of the republic must come to his senses and appoint a prime minister of the New Popular Front.”
A consensus candidate representing all parties of the NPF has yet to be named, with tensions rising between the centre-left Socialists on the one hand and the hard-left LFI, the Greens and the Communists on the other. Huggetto Bello, a former Communist MP and the current president of the regional council in a French overseas territory, was hoping to be the consensus candidate after rapidly gaining the support of LFI, the Communists, and the Greens. But the Socialists did not endorse Bello. Speaking to the demonstrators at Place de la Nation on Sunday, Louis Boyard, an LFI MP denounced the Socialists as he stated, “Huguette Bello would have been an incredible prime minister.”
On Sunday, the would-be consensus candidate announced she “decided to decline” the offer she was made by the NFP, sending the leftist alliance back to the search for a consensus candidate. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, founder and leader of the LFI, is another contender, reportedly being one of the names internally debated in the coalition. The Socialists, notably an outlier in the NFP coalition, support their own leader Olivier Faure. Outgoing prime minister and newly elected leader of the Renaissance Party parliamentary group Gabriel Attal has already submitted one resignation to President Macron directly after the elections, but Attal was asked to stay on as prime minister, and is expected to remain in his position till the end of the Paris Olympics. Some members of the RN have been calling for a non-partisan technocratic government to solve the current impasse, but Macron has vowed to block any governmental role for radicals on either end of the spectrum, ruling out representation for both the LFI and the RN in the new government.
Tewfik Aclimandos, the director of the European Studies Unit at the Egyptian Centre for Strategic Studies (ECSS), a think tank, remarked: “The only solution, which no one wants, is to have a national unity government including the far-right parties.” According to the latest poll by Harris Interactive France, the majority of French voters, 61 per cent, agree “that it is essential for different political groups to ally themselves in order to constitute a majority within the National Assembly to be able to govern the country.” An alliance between the centrist alliance, Ensemble, the centre-right Republicans, and the centre-left Socialists seems the only way forward if Macron is to uphold his self-imposed ban on radicals.
“If a national unity government is assembled without far-right representation, then this government will most likely fail,” cautioned Aclimandos. A clear majority of the French electorate, 64 per cent, want to see a government composed proportionally from different political coalitions, according to the aforementioned poll. However, as Aclimandos wondered, “a government of national unity around what? These parties agree on nothing.” France has not experienced a hung parliament, without a clear absolute majority for one party or one coalition, in its modern history. The French electoral system is based on constituencies voting for candidates, not proportional representation which usually results in an absolute majority and a clear mandate to govern. This is, as Aclimandos put it, a “completely new” prospect.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 11 July, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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