Open letter from Éric Ciotti to the President of the Republic

Mr. President of the Republic, declining your invitation to yet another communications operation is not a “major political mistake”. Nor is it “undignified” to question your non-participation in a march against anti-Semitism.

What is shameful is not listening to the voice of the people who, faced with so many daily challenges and the continued decline of their country, call for action, firmness and resilience.

What is outrageous is to receive, ahead of the march on November 12, Mr. Belattar – muse of the CCIF proud to be neither Charlie nor Nice – to question him on the repercussions in the neighborhoods of your possible participation in what should have been a moment of national unity.

What is unworthy is not to refuse your summons but to refuse the unprecedented call from the presidents of the two chambers. What is unworthy is not to be absent from Saint-Denis out of weariness from too much impotent communication but to be absent from a Republican march so as not to hurt the feelings of neighborhoods corrupted by Islamism and anti-Semitism.

No one can call into question the freedom that was yours in the choice you made. But allow us to question the reasons you wanted to invoke to justify this absence. You declare that you must work for the unity of the country. But with whom do you wish to preserve this unity if it must be guaranteed by your absence from a march against anti-Semitism?

Your decision is not trivial. It confirms to us that you have not been able to learn the lessons from the nights of guerrilla warfare which ravaged the country at the beginning of the summer and which demonstrated that entire territories have now seceded from the Republic, with its laws as well as with its values.

At the end of these riots which stunned the French, what was your response? From the com’.

A “major political initiative” – in your words – bringing together party leaders in Saint-Denis for long discussions. I participated in this first edition with sincerity but not without skepticism.

What could we actually expect from this approach? In response to the Yellow Vests, you invented the great debate. It didn’t lead to anything. In response to the missed presidential and legislative elections, you invented the National Council for Refoundation, a displaced pastiche of the heroic circle of the Resistance. It didn’t lead to anything. In response to the mobilization against pension reform, you reinvented the hundred days. They came to nothing.

The French are tired of these communication campaigns intended to occupy commentators and your advisors without changing anything, neither the difficulties of their daily life nor the destiny of the Nation.

For my part, after having given the benefit of the doubt to your initiative, I refuse to be the guarantor of a new sequence of narration which will achieve nothing. I explained this clearly to you in my letter of September 10.

You are the President of the French Republic and you must respect its institutions. By multiplying initiatives outside the institutional field, you are helping to weaken them and fuel the crisis in our democracy.

Your role is not to invent new ad hoc committees each year without a past or future, but to govern in the interest of the French and within the framework of our institutions.

With the 1958 constitution, General de Gaulle wanted to protect us from impotence and the Fifth Republic also grants you the broadest prerogatives that a European head of state can have: make use of them.

The discussion does not have to take place behind closed doors between party leaders either. It must be public, either in Parliament, where the people delegate their representatives, or directly with the people themselves by referendum.

Take the initiative to allow the constitutional revision that we have been requesting for several months, by calling on your majority to support our proposed revision, on December 7 in the Assembly. Given the seriousness of the state of the country, it is up to you to give the people a voice to emerge from this crisis.

Stop communicating: take action!

If you never escape this obsession with endless palaver, you would condemn your presidency to only remaining in the history books as a lost decade.