It didn’t take long. The government went to nine votes of censorship Monday in the Assembly, after a session however less burning than those of the previous week, the opposition already anticipating the aftermath.
At 6:50 p.m., the deputies of the left, standing and wearing their elected scarves, began to intone “resignation, resignation”, haranguing Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne in a Palais Bourbon padlocked all day by cordons of police and gendarmes.
A few seconds earlier, the president of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet proclaimed that the motion of censure they supported had failed. The disaster did not go far for the executive. 19 deputies from LR out of 61 finally voted in favor of the text carried by the independent centrist group LIOT, which attracted 278 votes out of the 287 necessary: ??Emmanuelle Anthoine, Jean-Yves Bony, Ian Boucard, Fabrice Brun, Dino Cinieri, Pierre Cordier, Josiane Corneloup, Vincent Descœur, Fabien Di Filippo, Julien Dive, Francis Dubois, Pierre-Henri Dumont, Justine Gruet, Maxime Minot, Aurélien Pradié, Raphaël Schellenberger, Isabelle Valentin, Pierre Vatin and Jean-Pierre Vigier.
“With nine votes” thus becomes one of the new slogans of the opposition. The government is “already dead in the eyes of the French”, wants to believe the president of the deputies LFI Mathilde Panot in front of a tide of journalists, some of whom came from abroad, present in the room of the Four Columns of the Palais Bourbon.
Less tense session
The frenzy took hold of the halls of the Assembly after the announcement of the tight result, never seen since a motion against the government of Pierre Bérégovoy in 1992. But throughout the day, the hemicycle remained far from of the tumults of last week when the Prime Minister brandished the weapon of 49.3. The rejection indeed seemed clearly expected by the camps for and against.
The successive speeches of the group presidents took place in relative calm. The president of the Renaissance group Aurore Bergé, on the offensive, aroused a bronca from the left and the RN by accusing them of wanting to make “common program” by voting the same motion of censure. The deputies of the two wings of the hemicycle did not fail in return to point out to him, by pointing to the benches, that those of the elected representatives of the majority were particularly sparse on this decisive Monday for the leader of the majority Elisabeth Borne, on the contrary ministers came in large numbers to support it.
But we cannot say that the elected officials were suspended on the assumption of an overthrow of the government. When LIOT deputy Charles de Courson vilified at the opening of the session the government’s “denial of democracy”, a Renaissance deputy preferred to read Le Figaro. When MP RN Laure Lavalette was speaking, it was an LFI MP who was reading Le Monde Diplomatique. And even during Elisabeth Borne’s speech, an elected official of the majority was relaxed enough to leaf through his newspaper.
“Meet the Street”
On white placards that they had prepared in advance to scold Elisabeth Borne in the hemicycle, the NUPES deputies had taken care to prepare the messages “Rendez-vous dans la rue”, or “RIP” echoing the shared initiative referendum that they filed with the Constitutional Council to try to bring down the reform.
Without waiting for the result of the polls, the RN group made an appointment on Tuesday morning for the filing of their appeal before the Constitutional Council, a procedure different from the RIP, which the left and the LIOT group also intend to use.
From now on, all eyes are turned towards the Élysée, towards the Sages and towards the street for the opposition. “Put on your best shoes.” Either we dance or we walk tonight, “anticipated environmentalist Sandrine Rousseau in the middle of the day. It will be walking.
Voting details
The motion of no confidence tabled by the independent centrist group LIOT drew 278 votes out of the 287 needed.
The National Rally’s (RN) no-confidence motion was unsurprisingly defeated, garnering just 94 votes.
