The Macronist Yaël Braun-Pivet was re-elected as president of the French National Assembly on Thursday in a secret ballot marked by suspense that was decided in her favour thanks to the votes of the right-wing deputies. The candidate of the Together for the Republic party (the French president’s party) beat the deputy of the New Popular Front, the communist André Chassaigne, in the third round (220 votes to 207).
Following the 2022 legislative elections, Braun-Pivet had resigned from her government post – she was then Minister for Overseas Territories – to be the candidate of the presidential party for the Assembly, but against the advice of Macron himself, who preferred other MPs from his party. However, at that time, Braun-Pivet prevailed and was elected in the second round with 242 votes. During the last legislative period, her activity as president was marked by several disputes with MPs from the left-wing party France Insoumise who have criticised her management of the hemicycle, in particular for the number of sanctions imposed against them (including some for displaying Palestinian flags).
The first woman to hold the post, she had made clear, since she was re-elected as a deputy on election night of 7 July, her intention to stand for re-election, despite the loss of her party’s parliamentary majority. “During these two years, I have fought day and night to ensure that the National Assembly would not be blocked, so that each and every one of the deputies would be respected,” Braun-Pivet had argued in the days leading up to the vote, referring to the relative majority situation in which the presidential coalition has found itself for two years, with 250 deputies elected, 82 more than the current one.
“The last few weeks have been extremely tense and we have seen a worried and fractured country. Today we have an enormous responsibility,” said Braun-Pivet, in her first speech before the chamber after being re-elected. The president recalled that there are “important issues at stake” in this legislature, that “our decisions and actions can change lives, as voters have told us. We have to listen to these messages and find solutions with new methods.” Braun-Pivet added that “this assembly is more representative of the French people, but it is also more divided,” explaining the need to find “compromises.”
From the first round, Braun-Pivet had the support of the presidential party (formerly called Renaissance, recently renamed Together for the Republic) and its allies from the centrist MoDem party. The other centre-right party, that of former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe (Horizons), decided to present an alternative candidate with the MP Naïma Moutchou. The MP from the Liberties, Independents, Overseas and Territories (LIOT) group, Charles de Courson, the longest-serving MP in the Assembly, was also a candidate.
In the days leading up to the vote, the group leaders and MPs had been holding talks and making agreements in the corridors of the Palais Bourbon, in order to negotiate possible support and possible withdrawals of candidates, especially after the first vote. In recent days, MPs from the Gaullist right (now under the name of the Republican Right) have nominated Philippe Juvin as their presidential candidate. Juvin was re-elected in his constituency after the presidential candidate withdrew in the second round and is one of the party figures most in favour of agreements with the centre. His withdrawal and the votes of his party for Braun-Pivet have been decisive.
The conservative MPs’ vote in favour of the Macronist candidate comes at a time when the French media have reported that the new leader of the Gaullist party, Laurent Wauquiez, is preparing a document that serves as a legislative pact for a possible alliance with Emmanuel Macron and the formation of a minority government that brings together conservatives and centrists.
Isolation of the left
When the results of the last legislative elections were announced, Emmanuel Macron declared that he would wait for “the structuring of the Assembly” before taking any decision on the appointment of a new prime minister. This statement made the election of the presidency of the chamber an important indicator, particularly in relation to the New Popular Front, which continues to claim the legitimacy to form a government because it is the coalition with the most seats.
For the left-wing MPs, the election of the candidate for the presidency of the Assembly had provided some relief from the growing tensions over the nomination of a candidate for prime minister representing all the left-wing parties. The parties of the New Popular Front (France Insoumise, the Socialist Party, Europe Ecology-The Greens and the Communist Party) agreed on the nomination of the communist MP for Puy-de-Dôme, André Chassaigne.
Chassaigne is the president of the Left, Democratic and Republican Group (GDR), which brings together progressive representatives from France’s overseas territories, as well as communists. He is a well-known figure in the National Assembly, where he has served for 22 years, and it was hoped that his stature and experience would enable him to win votes beyond his own ranks.
At the end of the session, the MP denounced that “the vote of the French had been stolen by an unnatural alliance”, referring to a possible agreement between conservatives and Macronists in exchange for the decisive votes. The communist politician said that the NFP is “proud to have fought this battle together, to have agreed on the name of a single candidate”. “We have defended our programme”, he added.
In fact, the NFP candidate came in first in the first round, ahead of the far-right candidate and Braun-Pivet, who came in third. But the withdrawals of the right-wing candidates and the Horizontes MP already indicated that Braun-Pivet would come out on top in the second round and placed her as the favourite for a hypothetical third ballot.
The far right, in search of alliances
Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has put forward its own candidate, Sébastien Chenu, vice-president during the last legislative term. Aware of not having enough votes to be elected, the far-right party hoped to negotiate the withdrawal of its candidate or the vote of its deputies, according to French media.
In exchange, they hoped to reach agreements with other groups on the distribution of other key positions in the Assembly. The condition that Le Pen’s party set was that the candidates should “support institutions and plurality.” This was a way of criticizing the attempts to establish a cordon sanitaire advocated by the left-wing parties, which had defended pacts with the Macronist coalition that could leave the National Rally deputies out of the commissions. But finally – and against all odds – Chenu maintained his candidacy in the third round.
The party with the most seats in parliament, Le Pen’s party is demanding two vice-presidencies, one of the three quaestors (responsible for managing financial and administrative services) and a secretariat. The National Rally is also demanding the presidency of the Finance Commission, which is due to be awarded on Saturday 20 July and which the Assembly’s rules state must go to the opposition. The problem is that, in the current situation, with no government and no clear majority, no one can yet say who the opposition is.
Criticism of the Government
The person who holds the presidency of the National Assembly is considered the fourth most important figure in the State, in addition to setting the political pace of the Lower House. He organizes parliamentary work, directs deliberations, maintains order in the session and can suspend it, among other prerogatives. He can also go to the Constitutional Council to decide whether the laws passed are in accordance with the Magna Carta or not.
Although the election is not directly linked to the appointment of the next prime minister, the understanding between Macronist and conservative MPs adds further uncertainty about a possible pact that could complicate the left’s attempts to come to power. However, experts have stressed that this election is above all an agreement on the functioning of the chamber and that it cannot necessarily be transferred to a government agreement or a majority in favour of a political project.
With the National Assembly having an unprecedented configuration – in the absence of clear majorities – the election of a new president represents a particularly important moment in the legislature and serves as a barometer of the balance of power between the different blocs. The remaining key positions on the Assembly Board will be filled between Friday and Saturday.
This context has made the vote receive special attention, at a crucial moment, with much uncertainty about the colour of the next government and in which the current executive headed by Gabriel Attal is in office. The fact that Attal and several members of the Government have participated in the vote has been criticised by the other political parties, who consider that it violates the separation of powers.
Thursday brought some striking images. As tradition dictates, the youngest MP in the Assembly – in this case Flavien Termet – aged 22, elected by the far right – was the first to vote and waited by the ballot box to shake hands with the other MPs. Many of the NFP MPs (all from France Insoumise) refused to do so.
On the other hand, the Green MP Sébastien Peytavie, the first French parliamentarian in a wheelchair, regretted in a tweet that he had not been able to vote directly in the first two rounds and “had to entrust his vote to an usher” because the chamber was not adapted. He was finally able to deposit his ballot in the ballot box in the third round, to the applause of all the deputies present in the chamber. Since his election in the previous legislature, Peytavie has sat in the front row, next to the traditional ministers’ bench, instead of on the bench with his group colleagues.
Source: www.eldiario.es
