Comment on French President Macron appoints new government, led by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu

• sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Nuts, I’m assuming this is abnormal for French politics?

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  • gbzm@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It is.
    It could be construed as a form of constitutional brutalism: in theory the president is free to name whomever he chooses, however he is expected to choose someone from the parliementary majority.

    But this is the first time in the history of the current constitution that the parliamentary majority isn’t an absolute majority or cannot form an absolute majority coalition. The consequence is that they can’t systematically no-confidence-oust any head of government they don’t approve of, and basically enforce this expectation directly.

    So Macron can just name someone from his minority (3rd biggest group even) every time a prime minister is ousted, and pretend he’s not violating the spirit of the constitution if not the letter. He can frame it as defending the republic against “extremes” even though the relative parliamentary majority he’s “defending against” is just a run-of-the-mills leftist alliance between parties that span from barely liberal to a bit more angry, but not extreme even by the state council’s own definition. The second biggest group, however, is actually the far-right authoritarian racist party founded by literal ex-SS that’s going to win a presidential election at some point if he doesn’t stop helping them with his own constant authoritarian propaganda and infuriating antidemocratic behavior.

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