This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l.
------------------------
Blowing a raspberry at France’s democracy
By: []
Date: 2021-08
On his way to being the first president of the Fifth Republic to visit the Catholic shrine at Lourdes in mid-July, Macron spoke of “the handful of rules that I decreed on Monday” 12 July. The visit was part of his drive to scoop up votes from the Catholic Right, the phrase was his description of the TV broadcast in which he announced how he intended to handle the epidemic in the teeth of the Delta variant: relaxation of social distancing rules but enforcement of vaccination by threatening the jobs of those who refuse a jab, particularly if they are health or care workers.
Decrees are things he likes. He has put fewer laws before the French parliament for its members to vote on than his predecessors, François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, but imposed many more measures by decree: 291 decrees so far, to just 180 voted laws.
The country’s constitutional court decided in May this year that, even if a decree was not validated by a parliamentary vote, it could retain the force of law that means it would escape control by the country’s Conseil d’Etat, France’s highest administrative court. The Conseil has been something of a thorn in Macron’s side, demanding, for instance, that the government mark some real progress on environmental issues before the end of this year.
Solo decision-making
In the context of such an erosion of democratic accountability, it is not surprising that, in France, public suspicion and cynicism around COVID has grown. Macron’s decision taking since the start of the pandemic has been dressed up in, at best, half-truths and, at worst, lies. The key decisions on when and how to act against the spread of the virus have all been guided by his political considerations rather than scientific advice. They have increasingly been taken solo.
On the morning of 12 July, the Elysée media briefers were saying the president would not be announcing what he then went on to ‘decree’ in the evening. By the first Monday in August, he was doing his own question-and-answer session on the internet, in T-shirt, from his holiday home on the Mediterranean. Brushing aside the country’s health services, he told us he was there to answer our concerns, to help us understand, as if he alone might persuade the recalcitrants who have been taking to the streets in growing numbers each weekend.
Barely half the population is fully vaccinated, and, in any case, the vaccine does not eliminate the transmission of the virus’s Delta variant. But the panoply of potential measures to halt the spread of the virus has been all but ditched in favour of a vaccination drive. This has not yet covered the whole population because the vaccines are not yet there for everyone.
It helps Macron to focus on the tiny fringe that will forever refuse a vaccine. In his discourse, all is reversed, inverted. It is not the continuing failure of the French state to mobilise the public services, industrial production and the population in general against this epidemic that he wants us to denounce, but the most abject victims of that failure. It is not the erosion of the public health system or French science, but a handful of health workers ambushed by anti-vax propaganda that he wants subjected to scrutiny. The heroes of the spring of last year are, for him, the scapegoats of today.
[END]
[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/blowing-a-raspberry-at-frances-democracy/
[2] url:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
OpenDemocracy via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/
