CollateralDamage

What Macron allies are saying to justify his moves is some of the most undemocratic stuff I've ever read, it's frankly beyond unreal. This is François Bayrou, a very famous liberal centrist politician who's a long-time supporter of Macron. First of all, he rejects the fact there was a winner in the elections: "Those who claim there was a winner in this election know very well that they're talking nonsense. It's not true." His interpretation of the election result is that "it says: 'French democracy cannot be led by an absolute majority of the far-right, or extremes in general'". When the votes - factually speaking - said the exact contrary: what he calls the "extremes" (the New Popular Front, NPF, and the Rassemblement National, RN) gathered 63% of the votes (37% for RN and 26% for NPF) and have 56% of the seats in parliament (31% of the seats for NPF and 25% for RN). His own group - Macron's political coalition - got 23% of the votes and 26% of the seats... So what the French very much said with their vote is "we're fed up with the political center, fed up with Macron and his ilk, we want dramatic change, not business as usual". Transforming that into "the French said they don't want to be led by the extremes", and therefore implying they want to keep being led by the center, is beyond unreal. So what's Bayrou's proposal? That's the most insane part. He says: "There is only one thing to do in my eyes: the President of the Republic appoints a prominent figure to form the government. This figure proposes a team, and this team does not ask for prior agreement from political parties since it will never obtain it." In other words he proposes to completely bypass the democratic process: Macron chooses a new Prime Minister - obviously someone he likes - and does away with the inconvenience of asking parliament for their agreement, because if he did they obviously wouldn't agree. How would that not be a coup? Explain this to me like I'm five... Lastly, he explains why Macron shouldn't appoint a NPF Prime Minister which should normally be the case were Macron to follow democratic rules set be precedent (the PM is normally and logically appointed from the group with the most seats in Parliament). He says that "the main obstacle for the NPF bloc, which claims victory, is its program". That's it, that's the quiet part out loud, they don't want the NPF to assume power because they don't like their their program. So effectively they're shamelessly arguing that their political preferences trump the democratic process. Link: lemonde.fr/politique/live/20…