French word of the day: Le Précipice

Published: 4 July 2024

It is the last week before school holidays! Older kids have already gotten off a week or so earlier but for the little ones, this week is the big sh-bang.

And it is clear that French President Emmanuel Macron doesn’t have kids. Because for some mind-boggling reason, in true kamikaze style, he has decided to call a snap legislative election.

So far from being busy finalizing those vacation plans, signing the kids up for next year’s extracurriculars, buying teacher gifts, pre-summer birthday parties, and ordering september’s school stationary list, we’re all sitting agog at the outrageous hyperbole being spouted in the political tv debates.

(Spare a thought for the journalists and politicians who probably had planned being on a beach somewhere this week.) It is clear that this is a shock to everyone, including those in Macron’s own party. Apparently from one day to the next, the deputies lost their privately chauffeured cars and legislative phones.

Now I could try to drown out some of the noise with the Euro 2024 football championship, except many of the games have been preempted by the endless candidate appearances on the national news.

And Olympics, what Olympics?

For the simple-minded average citizen like me, there was no clear reason for an election. Macron is a lame-duck president. He could have spent the next 3 years partying in Saint-Tropez, and we could all have continued ignoring the whole lot of them.

Instead, if you’ve seen the headlines, France is on the edge of a precipice. The extreme-right Rassemblement Nationale (RN) is on the verge of gaining a majority in France for the 1st time since WWII, while the far-left France Insoumise (LFI) is busy adding fuel to the fire in the hopes of recuperating something out of the ashes.

Don’t get me wrong, I usually love voting in elections. There’s something that feels so patriotic about going all together to cast your vote and then tuning in to watch the results.

I have never missed a vote where I’ve been eligible. And I have several family members who have even volunteered to count the votes. (I refuse to sit through a political debate however, please hand over the day-after cliffnotes version!)

We’re pretty lucky in that our polling place is a 10 minute walk away, we see all the folks in the neighborhood, and it is usually a quick in-and-out with a bit of chitchat. I like to go in the mornings, so that we can stop by the Sunday farmers’ market after and head home for lunch. What could be easier?

Unless the stakes are so catastrophically high, of course. The 1st round of voting was completed last Sunday, with the top 2-3 candidates moving to the second round of voting this Sunday July 7th. Turnout is already the highest that it has been in 40 years.

There are 577 seats up for grabs in the Assemblée Nationale, with 289 seats required for an absolute majority. The far-right has already claimed 39 of them, and the far-left is already planning large protests (which tend to turn violent) if the RN gains a majority. How fun for everyone.

All of which makes the previous ponderings of whether or not anyone can swim in the Seine seem like such innocent times. Best case scenario, surely we can manage to eek out a hung legislature, no? I’m ready for that 3-year party in Saint Tropez. Le sigh…

In other news:

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