Emmanuel Macron wins shock vote to keep coalition hopes alive and stop the left

By Victor Goury-Laffont - "Politico" 

PARIS — Emmanuel Macron’s party formed a last-minute agreement with right-leaning lawmakers to win a key vote in parliament on Thursday that opens the door to the French president playing a greater-than-expected role in forming the country’s next government.

The two political groups put together an ad-hoc alliance to reelect Yaël Braun-Pivet as head of the French National Assembly, the fourth highest-ranking official in France. The vote was widely seen as a test of who could work together in France’s fractured parliament to name a future prime minister.

In combining forces, the centrists and the center right seized political momentum while also delivering a stunning blow to their rivals further to the left.

Braun-Pivet’s win “makes it likely that Macron will be able to appoint a prime minister from his camp,” Matthieu Hocque, a political analyst at the Millénaire public policy think tank in Paris, said. “In France’s modern history, the president of the National Assembly has always been in the same camp as the prime minister, it would be historical if it were not to be the case.”

Thursday’s dramatic vote came just 11 days after the New Popular Front (NFP), a broad alliance of left-wing parties, secured a surprise victory in this summer’s snap election, winning the most seats but falling far short of an outright majority.

The inconclusive result of the election pushed French politics into turmoil, threatening the EU’s second-biggest economy with months or even years of political paralysis.

But Thursday night’s vote in the National Assembly indicates that a narrow path through the deadlock may be in sight.

The contest came down to the wire. After the center right withdrew its own candidate following the first round of the three-round vote, Braun-Pivet and her opponent from the left, Communist lawmaker André Chassaigne, found themselves separated by just eight votes. Braun-Pivet ended up winning thanks to the support of just a few unaffiliated lawmakers.

Despite their success through unity, Macron’s camp and the conservatives may not continue their partnership.

A conservative lawmaker, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said the newly formed Republican Right political group would take a step-by-step approach, focusing its efforts at this stage on securing key positions in the National Assembly rather than discussing building a government together. The Republican Right has formally registered as being part of the opposition, the lawmaker added. 

The conservatives had previously publicly rejected the prospect of an outright coalition with the pro-Macron camp, but they have steadily signaled their openness to finding common ground on policy — putting forward a “legislative package” focused on policies aimed at “better recognizing work and restoring authority.” 

The NFP, meanwhile, now looks closer to collapsing than ever before. The alliance’s bickering and infighting prevented it from rallying behind a single candidate for prime minister, and even agreeing on Chassaigne — a congenial and well-respected parliamentarian — required negotiations that lasted until the day before the vote.

Several of its members cried foul following the vote, accusing the Ensemble group that backs Macron and the Republican Right of subverting the will of the people by striking an agreement behind closed doors that kept the president’s ally in her post despite his party coming second in parliamentary elections.

A handful of lawmakers booed Braun-Pivet during her reelection speech. When she said the French had “returned to the polls,” one MP yelled back “not for you.”

“Many of our fellow citizens are going to ask themselves if this is a denial of democracy,” Charles de Courson, a veteran centrist lawmaker and Macron opponent, told reporters after the vote. Courson ran in the first two rounds of Thursday’s contest before pulling out ahead of the final vote.

Coalition-building and cross-party compromise are rare exercises in French politics. But a minority government would likely be too fragile to survive. With no political party coming close to reaching an absolute majority in the snap election, a coalition government has long appeared to be the most likely outcome.

“We have no choice. We have to get along, we have to cooperate, we have to compromise, we have to have dialogue, we have to listen and move forward,” Braun-Pivet said in her victory speech.

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(Victor Goury-Laffont - www.politico.eu - Jason Wiels contributed to this report)