The decision to dissolve the French National Assembly for snap elections was not due to a poor showing by President Emmanual Macron in the European Parliament elections but by his belief that the administration had become “ungovernable”.
So claimed his father Jean-Michel Macron in an interview with the Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace published on July 3.
While most people assumed the election move was a result of the pasting the President and his party received in the EP ballot of June 6-9, the French leaders’ father said his son had told him several weeks previously that he was planning to dissolve the National Assembly.
“His decision… did not come from the result of the European elections. He had already told me about it two months earlier,” the man said.
“He believed that the National Assembly had become ungovernable,”
Jean-Michel Macron added that he was worried about how the French election was shaping up, describing himself as being “afraid” that a Marine Le Pen government could be on the cards.
He went on to claim that such an eventuality had been factored into his son’s plan, with the Renaissance Party leader’s thinking being that it is better to let the National Rally enter government now and fail, rather than do so in a few years time when they could be even stronger.
“Now, if the French want it, they will experience it. They will see the result. It is better for France to experience this for two years rather than for five years.
“If the RN shows in two years that it is completely incapable of governing, we can hope it will not go further. That’s what my son told me two months before the European elections.”
Macron senior said he did not think his son would resign if RN won the last round of elections on July 7.
He also expressed his wish that the President would get out of politics altogether when he does relinquish his role.
“I just hope that after his term ends in 2027, he will do something other than politics,” he said.
The President’s father said he would vote for a left-wing candidate against an RN one but was adamant he would not back hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon of La France Insoumise (LFI).
“He’s crazy,” he said of Mélenchon, adding: “I would be very annoyed [if an LFI candidate won] because the Mélenchonists are unbearably rude.”
Jean-Michel Macron said he agreed with most of what his son had done in government, even praising him over the contested pension reform, though acknowledged he could be hamfisted in his efforts at times.
“We had to reform pensions even if the French people did not like it, given the increase in life expectancy,” he said.
“I don’t think he made any big mistakes, maybe clumsiness in the way he announced things.”
“There are not many politicians who would have been able to get out of a crisis like that of the Yellow Vests,” he concluded, referring to the outbreak of mass protests across France in 2018 over social issues such as the fuel tax.
