The annoyance begins to be felt on the benches of the Renaissance. While fifteen macronista deputies could not vote for the pension reform and make it known, their colleagues misinterpret their prejudices and reproach them with increasing force.
“We’re sick of the chorus of mourners,” one of the group’s executives snapped on BFMTV.com. “They chose us in a program, we respect it and that’s it.”
“We have to think carefully about our actions”
For ten days, several elected representatives of the presidential majority have come out of the forest to express their fear of certain elements of the reform proposed by the government of Elisabeth Borne, in particular the lowering of the legal age of departure to 64 years.
The debate that begins this Monday, February 6 in the chamber of the National Assembly promises to be crucial for these parliamentarians who condition their vote to better take into account the situation of women or those with a long history.
If the government shows off its serenity – Élisabeth Borne thus assured the deputies that “the majority would be united” to vote on the bill – several deputies do not like these outputs.
“I remember that we had been elected in an even more ambitious retirement project at 65 and that we are at a turning point in the five-year term,” replies the elected official of Essonne Robin Reda. “We have to think carefully about our actions.”
“We all come out a little bit of the closet”
The criticism is all the worse because the majority is not used to dealing with the desire for independence of its members. With the exception of the asylum-immigration law defended in 2018 by Gérard Collomb, then Minister of the Interior, the majority has never been crossed by strong tensions.
Given the defeat of several left-wing deputies during the last legislative elections and a more marked right-wing majority than in 2017, many are also those who within the group did not see dissent coming.
“We all left the cabinet a bit when we saw that Barbara Pompili did not want to vote for the text. We may not agree, but we say it to each other,” explains a Macronie lieutenant.
The departure of the former minister of Emmanuel Macron, who explained to BFMTV.com in mid-January that he did not want to vote for the reform “at this stage”, sent chills through the macronie.
“We have the freedom to speak”
If the former environmentalist was the first out of the woods, other Renaissance deputies followed suit like Patrick Vignal, followed by an elected deputy Modem and 2 Horizons. Some of the elected Macronistas who doubt the reform are also trying to influence the content of the reform by organizing themselves in a Whatsapp loop titled “socially yours.”
“We have the freedom to speak,” said Jean-Marc Zulesi, president of the Commission for Sustainable Development.
“You can tell that we have a group that lives and it shows that we are not Playmobil,” continues the deputy. “This is good news.”
Before qualifying your comments. “I do not deny that we must continue working on the text. But it can be counterproductive to do it publicly and get you out of negotiations with the government,” this elected official from Bouches-du-Rhône still assures.
“In the group nobody listens to us”
Among the deputies who have publicly expressed their reluctance, we assume, however, that they have spoken in the media, even if that means angering the majority.
“We cannot exist in the chamber,” denounces one of them. “We only have 20 days of debate and we will be prohibited from presenting our amendments. Obviously, we will be heard in the media. In the group, nobody listens to us.”
“Emmanuel Macron should be happy that he doesn’t just have black eyes,” he adds.
Other deputies have opted for another path to make their disapproval of the reform more discreetly known: be very discreet on the ground. The public meetings to defend the text have not been so numerous, which causes gnashing of teeth internally. “I tell my colleagues who are afraid of reform that they will be associated with it,” says Renaissance Senator Xavier Iacovelli. “So they have to take on a little bit.”
But in the macronie, few really believe that these deputies reach the end of their approach pointing the finger at the diversity of profiles.
“You have one that only represents itself, a small Whatsapp loop without a lot of people, and one or two that will have a pool at voting time,” suggests an executive from the group.
“Well, it’s really not going to change much in the end for the vote,” he hopes. “I’m a little worried about the union suite.” The majority obviously prefers to be aware of the street since two new inter-union mobilizations will take place this Tuesday, February 7 and Saturday, February 11.
Source: BFM TV
