Pressure is beginning to mount on French President Emmanuel Macron, with a survey finding that a majority of the French public want to see him step down.
According to an Ipsos survey for the Le Monde newspaper, conducted between July 26th to August 1st, 51 per cent of the French people are in favour of President Macron resigning.
The poll also found that 53 per cent were not satisfied with Macron’s leadership, compared to just 15 per cent who were and 32 per cent who were neither.
The survey comes amid continued political chaos in France as the country has been left for nearly two months without an actual government, with Prime Minsiter Gabriel Attal only staying on as a caretaker with no power to enact new legislation.
While President Macron had partnered with the leftist New Popular Front (NFP) in a last-ditch election gambit to prevent Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) from winning the second round of the snap legislative elections last month, he has so far refused to form a government with the NFP.
This has prompted calls for impeachment from the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) party of former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is often compared to America’s Bernie Sanders or Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn.
The LFI has argued that it must “defend democracy against the president’s authoritarian leanings”. However, the far-left may not have much of a leg to stand on, given that while the New Popular Front won the most seats, it did not win the most votes, that distinction goes to Le Pen’s National Rally.
Furthermore, the NFP has been urging Macron to appoint Lucie Castets as his next prime minister, yet the socialist economist and former French deep state bureaucrat has never been elected to any post and did not even run in last month’s elections, undercutting the left’s claim to the role of saviours of democracy.
It is also unclear if Mélenchon will be able to build enough bridges to get enough votes to impeach Macron, with two-thirds of the National Assembly and Senate combined needed to oust a president, meaning that the far-left leader would likely need to woo Le Pen’s faction to meet that hurdle.
The French Constitution is rather vague about what to do in case of a hung parliament or indeed on the necessary elements needed to spark an impeachment of a president. Under Article 68, the constitution says that a president may be removed “in the event of a breach of duty manifestly incompatible with the exercise of his mandate.” Before 2007, it was a touch more clear, with a president only being able to be impeached for “high treason”.
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