Jean-Louis Debré does not mince his words. The former Minister of the Interior under Jacques Chirac, also past president of the National Assembly and the Constitutional Council, was the guest of the Grand Rendez-vous this Sunday. When discussing the social tensions arising from the adoption of the pension reform, he regretted a form of disconnection of the power in place vis-à-vis the people. At the microphone of Sonia Mabrouk, Mathieu Bock-Côté and Stéphane Dupont, Jean-Louis Debré denounced the “forceps” passage of the controversial text while considering that politicians, in general, had “lost the sense of the people “.
A “sense of superiority”
In the viewfinder of the former deputy, the use of article 47-1, paragraph 2 of the Constitution allowing to accelerate the debates in Parliament by fixing a shortened deadline to examine the whole of the bill. “When we are in power, we make sure not to rush things. I’m sorry, we are not within eight days”, he said before identifying the reasons which, according to him, , led the executive towards a hasty adoption of the pension reform. “We thought, in an analysis that is not good, that all this (the challenge, editor’s note) was going to calm down”. A lack of appreciation that Jean-Louis Debré associates with a lack of closeness between the macronie and the French people.
“Me, what strikes me a lot is that for six years, the party of the President of the Republic, Renaissance, has not established itself in the territories. It does not exist”, asserted the former deputy . And to continue by specifying his thought: “Those who are there are people who have no contact with public opinion, no contact with the people and who were elected on a wave”. Jean-Louis Debré also castigated the “feeling of superiority” which would win the ranks of the presidential party. “And I find that they don’t know anything, that they don’t know life,” he said.
“The French have the feeling that the President of the Republic does not listen to them”
Three weeks ago, a last Ifop poll for the JDD, revealing the low popularity of Emmanuel Macron (28%) raised the question of the legitimacy of the President of the Republic, attacked from all sides from the premises of this debate on pensions. “From an institutional point of view, he was elected, he has legitimacy. But today, there is a second legitimacy, apart from democratic legitimacy: it is dialogue with the people. today, the French have the feeling that the President of the Republic does not listen to them”, analyzes Jean-Louis Debré.
According to him, it would be desirable to “regularly see the various professional organizations and trade unions” in order to “build” with them “a certain number of reforms”. “And then you have to ask each of these deputies who are above ground to be in their constituency,” he urged. As for the famous citizens’ conventions which have been on the rise in recent months, like those on the climate or the end of life, Jean-Louis Debré called for mistrust in the face of these initiatives which take place outside the parliamentary framework. . “We want to go behind the representatives of the people. However, be careful not to play the people against their representatives! If there is a place where we can deliberate on everything, it is in the National Assembly or in the Senate”, a he insisted.