“Breaking down the barriers of impotence”. This is the wish expressed by the former leader of the Les Républicains party Laurent Wauquiez in the Journal du Dimanche on February 18. Asked about the decision of the Council of State to demand from Arcom more demanding control of the editorial line of CNews, the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region returned to the overall role of independent administrations and public institutions in French political life, which he considers undemocratic. “When administrative bodies themselves begin to make the law, the balance on which our democracy rests is threatened,” warns the figure of the LR party.
For the regional president, the Fifth Republic has become a “regime of impotence”, where the legislative will is strewn with “blockages” which only “paralyze the action of the State”. “We have multiplied the obstacles by creating independent administrative authorities which are so many legal feudalities,” he believes, deploring that these bodies “no longer answer to anyone and create their own rules which are binding on everyone”. And to cite in particular the multiple decisions of the Constitutional Council, regularly preventing the application of expulsions or anti-terrorism laws.
For Laurent Wauquiez, changing things requires “knowledge of what is blocking the country from within”. A skill that the enarch prides himself on possessing. “My strength is that through my training and my experiences, I know perfectly the cogs of the machine and what ended up blocking it,” declares former advisor to Nicolas Sarkozy, saying he is capable of “unlocking” them.
Laurent Wauquiez also deplores that the use of the referendum has “never” been “so rare under the Fifth Republic”. And to recall the consultation in 2016 on the airport project at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, near Nantes, when the yes vote won with 55.17% of the votes, but Prime Minister Édouard Philippe then dismissed in the face of the demands of environmentalist minorities. A “democratic capitulation that we are still paying for today,” criticizes the regional president.
He rejects the “so-called participatory democracy”, which he considers hypocritical, like the “Citizens’ Convention” consisting of drawing lots from a small group of citizens to think about a subject. This model was used for the climate in 2019, or even on the subject of the end of life in 2023. Rather advocating a system of “dialogue”, Laurent Wauquiez says he is “favorable” to a system inspired by Switzerland. Every year, citizens would be consulted on the subjects of security, immigration, schools and health. “The French could express themselves without their decisions being contested: their choice would immediately have the force of change,” he calls for.
