Macron’s pension decree costs two votes of no confidence

Decision of Emmanuel Macron resort article 49.3. of the Constitution approve pension reform without a vote of the Assembly opened a political and social crisis of difficult to predict proportions. This Friday, the deputies presented two motions for a vote of no confidence, which will be discussed on Monday. On the one hand, it is from the representatives National regrouping (RN), led by Marine Le Pen, and on the other hand the group Libertades, Independientes, Overseas and Territories (LIOT), a multi-party initiative signed by 91 representatives from five parties.

Despite this strong mobilization, today it is unlikely that they will topple the Government, because for that they need the votes of at least half of the 573 members of parliament, and so far no calculations have been made. 287 votes are needed.

The no-confidence motion of the far-right party is unlikely to get more support than 88 deputies, while the initiative led by the LIOT centrists could count on 149 votes from the groups that make up the left-wing Nupes (Socialists, Environmentalists, Communists and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insumis). , who will be joined by 88 from RN and 20 from LIOT.

To bring down Élisabeth Borne’s government, they need the votes of at least 30 of the 61 deputies who make up the conservative Los Republicanos group. Its president said he would not be associated with any no-confidence motion because “they don’t want to create chaos on chaos.” Although the fact that he did not put his signature on any of the proposed proposals does not mean that on Monday there will be no representatives of the right who will decide to vote on the proposal of the LIOT group, the dissident votes are not enough for now. force Borne to resign. For Los Republicanos, supporting the motion of no confidence would mean voting against the pension reform they largely defend, which would lead to them losing credibility among their constituents.

While the MPs were dealing with motions of no confidence, demonstrations and blockades were multiplying in the streets, waiting for a new day of mobilization called by the trade unions for March 23.

Garbage on the streets

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced that the order to return to work given to the cleaning services had been respected, but the 10,000 tons of garbage that had accumulated in these twelve days of the strike were still on the streets of Paris. .

At least 310 people were arrestedmost in Paris, Thursday night stage of strife and destruction, such as those that provoked several hundred people on Paris’s Place de la Concorde or on the streets of Rennes. Riots broke out again this Friday. The president of the Macron group in the Parliament, Aurora Bergé, asked the Minister of the Interior to ensure the protection of the MPs. According to Darmanin, the number of complaints from parliamentarians about received threats is “very significant”. In Dijon, for example, some dolls representing Emmanuel Macron and part of his government were burned.

CFDT leader Laurent Berger rejected any “even symbolic” violence and described the acts as “unacceptable and unforgivable”, urging the fight against pension reform to continue with determination but “respecting property and people”.

LIOT, an unknown party that leads the parliamentary pulse against the Government

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The parliamentary group that presented one of the motions for a vote of no confidence in the Government, called Liberties, Independents, Overseas and Territorial (LIOT), is the smallest in the French National Assembly, consisting of 20 representatives. Some are centrists, others Corsican nationalists, others represent overseas territories, and since September there have been four dissident representatives from the Socialist Party, dissatisfied with their party’s alliance with the extreme left.

“We are independent representatives who work beyond political differences,” said its president, Bertrand Pancher of the Radical Party. They are in opposition to the Government, but they are not hostile to the agreements with the Borne Executive Committee. But the way he handled the pension reform led them to lead a rebellion against the Government.

Among them, the centrist Charles de Courson stands out, elected as a representative for 30 years, and he comes from a family of parliamentarians with more than two centuries of history.

Some give him the nickname “monk soldier of public finance” because he was an expert on the subject and because he did not allow the government to pass one. In addition, he is one of the few who defends the abolition of the special regime for members of parliament. “We cannot demand efforts from our fellow citizens without applying them to ourselves,” he claims.