They talked to each other. The eleven party bosses and the president even had a canned and working dinner on August 30 in Saint-Denis. An unprecedented exchange that lasted until 3 a.m. Without flying plates or even names of birds, while the National Assembly has turned into an aviary and the public debate into a deadly confrontation.
However, in this riotous and royal city of Saint-Denis under the closed eye – but is it really? – of the kings lying in the basilica, the party leaders dialogued civilly with the republican monarch. Monschau! Saint-Denis!, “We listened to each other”, confided several participants off the record, as if they felt guilty for departing from the partisan civil war which is, alas, our daily theater. In other words, not only was there dialogue, acclaimed by the French, but it was convivial, which changes our routine of dry bread and bitter herbs. Note also that, to achieve this, it was necessary to leave the Colts, sorry the cell phones, in the locker room, as well as the advisers elsewhere.
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Beneficial behind closed doors
Behind closed doors. Strict. What had already succeeded with Michel Rocard Prime Minister during the secret negotiations continued in June 1988 in Matignon on New Caledonia. The media had known nothing, not even that the head of government, afflicted with violent crises of calculations, was going back and forth between the bathroom and the meeting rooms. The bet of the President of the Republic was risky. It was feared, it had been announced, that such a table would turn into a rat race, such as the one illustrated by the cartoonist Caran d’Ache in Le Figaro during the Dreyfus affair, where we saw the unleashed guests stabbing each other with knives and forks with this simple but explicit caption: “They talked about it.”
From this momentary Dionysian success – we have to wait for the sequel – we can already note a salutary evolution. Emmanuel Macron had theorized the disappearance of parties. But the same is now calling on them to “find some air”. Did he have to be at risk of asphyxiation for him to have prayed to the much-mocked “particles” to offer him breathing and inspirations? He who so mocked these ghosts of the past, now he remembers that, according to article 4 of the Constitution, “political parties and groups contribute to the expression of suffrage. They are formed and exercise their activity freely. They must respect the principles of national sovereignty and democracy.” They are the intermediaries between the people and the government. They legitimize and stabilize the democratic regime by making it work.
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A useful reminder for the parties themselves, deserted for a very long time. They have sunk into a community of co-owners concerned solely with the preservation or the conquest of power. To the point that with an anemic participation one borders on the democratic accident. Oppositions have every interest in getting out of their sectarian postures, while wars are knocking on our doors, and economic, social, ecological and identity crises are raging here. The parties also have to demonstrate that they can provide responses commensurate with the formidable challenges that the country must face. With the president, they are condemned to fight each other, no doubt, but also to progress together. A bit like the blind and the paralytic.
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