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The latest elections in France unveiled the evolving political chasms, the growing political and constitutional discrepancies and the systemic exclusions aimed at hobbling the National Rally (NR), and perpetuating the stigmas and the ostracism against this political formation. Ten million political voters are discounted from the French political landscape and relegated to political irrelevance at a time when they have logged 37/100 of the votes. The legacy of stigmatization and political segregation is deliberately pursued, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. This electoral contest features, in its own right, the widening cleavages between the ordinary French citizen (citoyen lambda) and the cross-sectional elitism of professional politics and the widespread disenchantment it elicited all along (Politikverdrossenheit, the weariness from politics).
After the National Rally’s consecutive victories at the European and national levels, declining political parties on the left and on the right have joined chorus to defeat the NR which, nonetheless, remains the largest individual winner of the electoral contest. The fragmented left and its extremist fringes (NPF, New Popular Front), united under the banner of defeating the rising national Right, struck a temporary alliance with the presidential center and its allies to contain the overwhelming tide which catapulted it into the heart of French politics as a major player to reckon with. Oddly enough, in the second round of elections, political programs were set aside and canvassing was all about witch-hunting. Nothing to relish about and a sign of a bad omen.
The scrambling role of President Macron has gone awry, and the country ended up in a state of disarray, incivility and political stasis. While trying to uphold his declining fortunes, the president is set on safeguarding his umpiring role, patching up the devastating consequences of the impromptu dissolution of the assembly, and negotiating an awkward broad coalition regrouping moderates at both ends of the political spectrum, dismissing the extreme fringes, or falling back on a government of technocrats who have to find their way within the labyrinthine maze of highly polarized French politics and their frenzied overtones.
The leftist coalition will have a hard time sustaining its momentum, since the casual circumstances which brought them together are not connoted with deeper commitments and a substantive agreement on a common political program. The New popular Front has drafted a very weak political platform which rehashes outdated public policy proposals based on a poor understanding of economic and societal issues and their financial collaterals (230- 300 billion Euros added annually to the monumental debt to feed the nanny State and further clientelism). Jean Luc Mélenchon and the LFI (La France Insoumise, the unbowed France) seized the state of political fragmentation to move into political subversion, promote factionalism, challenge the constitutional checks and balances, disrupt the rules of political rotation in democracy, and question the basic rules of accommodation which prevail under unruly political circumstances. To boot, the communitarian and Islamist political proclivities of the LFI and the leftist politics of denial in this regard are challenging their republican credentials.
The imperative mandates under turmoil politics are the safeguard of civil peace, the search of a common political ground which serves as a platform for the formation of a working government and effective policy making. The process is not easy, French political culture is too ideological, and the extremist political fringes on the left are not adept at democratic and constitutional governance. The culture of Bolshevik agitation (agit-prop) and political nihilism is not only incompatible with democratic institutions, but destroys their very foundation and the conditions of civil concord.
The risks of a systemic parliamentary instability, reminiscent of the fourth Republic, is putting at stake working governance, disrupting the economy, feeding the financial volatility and the monumental debt crisis, destabilizing the labor market and enhancing the unemployment doldrums. The Chavist political program of the New Popular Front is anachronistic and totally out of step with the nuts and bolts of contemporary economics, the rising geo-economics and the informational age faultlines. Hopefully, France is going to find its way back into a new balanced relationship between its constitutional powers and pave its way into a working partnership between the different aisles of the political spectrum.
The late NATO summit held in Washington-DC conveys the picture of a smoldering Cold War and its resolutions are quite reflective of dire security hazards in Ukraine, the Baltic States and Poland which mandate maximal alert, especially after China’s political endorsement of Russia and declaration of hostility towards NATO. Still, the Western security coalition which safeguarded Europe in the aftermath of WWII is challenged on multiple accounts: its internal cohesiveness, financial sustainability, honored commitments of its members and the future role of its main pillar the United States under Donald Trump in case of reelection. The 75th anniversary of NATO raises critical issues about Transatlantic security, and the coalition of rogue States clustering around the Chinese-Russian Totalitarian axis of power. The politics of deliberate turmoil spreading throughout various geopolitical spectrums is the propelling dynamic behind surrogate conflicts worldwide.
The Middle East happens to be a major theater where historical grievances, colliding imaginaries and social protracted conflicts seem to serve as vehicles and platforms for the unfolding Cold War politics. The events in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria are lifted out of their orbits and serve as surrogate warfares with tenuous relations with the originating conflicts and their future prospects. The October 7, 2023 pogrom in South Israel and the hostage-taking strategy epitomize the exponential dynamics of an open-ended conflict which dispenses with political mediations and negotiated conflict resolution between the actors.
The Iranian unholy ghost hovers over Gaza, South Lebanon and South West Syria and transforms them into permanent sites of enduring conflicts, and sources of endemic instability. The whole diplomatic efforts have failed so far, since they are manipulated by the Iranian power broker and its Sino-Russian handlers. The vicious game is unlikely to unravel unless the power relationships are inverted and the conflicts’ inner dynamics are extracted from their magnetic fields and enabled to recover their operational latitude and notional autonomy.
