Macron is looking for scapegoats

By Costas Raptis

What is more problematic: the French president’s vocabulary, regular calculations or political philosophy? Emanuel Macron caused a stir with the not at all presidential use of the French colloquial verb emmerder, when in an interview with the newspaper Le Parisién he confessed that he wanted to “break the nerves” (we translate in the most decent way) of the unvaccinated revision of the legislation on the already controversial “health pass” in France.

However, after a series of procedural delays and three days of stormy debate in the French National Assembly, the bill in question was approved by a vote of 214 to 93, with a total of 334 votes in favor. which provided for the presentation of a vaccination certificate or a recent test for entry into enclosed public spaces and now the unvaccinated are placed in a state of exclusion.

Of course, this obsession seems paradoxical in a country where the vaccination rate is around 90%, especially when the Omicron mutation overturns all previous beliefs (and government strategies) about the possibility of building an artificial immune wall in the coronavirus.

But for Emanuel Macron, who, unlike all his opponents, has not yet announced his candidacy for next April’s presidential election, to show determination in the name of the broad majority has an obvious pre-election goal. In particular, if such a thing serves to highlight the divisions on the issue within the opposition center-right Republican party, which he offered he anointed the relatively untested presidential candidate Valery Pekres.

Indeed, there were many lawmakers and Republicans who refused to vote on the new health bill, but Macron’s public pressure turned those who did not want to appear “irresponsible.”

However, they do not include Marne-Loire MP Anne-Lorraine Blenn, who tabled an amendment that excluded suffrage constraints from the bill. The amendment was rejected – in other words, the unvaccinated lose their voting right in practice. Macron can be satisfied that he is putting out of the upcoming difficult match a part of the electorate that will probably not be friendly to him.

According to the latest poll by Harris Interactive for Challenges magazine, the current president is said to have 24% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, while Pekres with 16% is equal to the far-right candidates Marin Le Pen and Eric Zemour . Although, however, she does not seem to have gained momentum, Pekres is the only candidate who can threaten Macron, if she qualifies in the second round. Opposite her, the resident of Elysia seems to be marginally ahead with a percentage of 51% against 49%, while she would easily secure his re-election with an opponent, Lepen (55-45%) or Zemour (61-39%).

But the nickname emmerder was not the worst thing the French president has said these days. In the same interview, Emanuel Macron added: “This is the huge moral error of the vaccinators: they undermine the power of the nation. When my freedom threatens that of others, I become irresponsible. An irresponsible person is no longer a citizen.”

As an assistant for a time in the youth of the famous philosopher Paul Reeker (before discovering his career as a banker), Macron often liked “contemplative” abominations. he does not comply with the above requirements, in the name of “solidarity” and “scientific truth”.

This is a profoundly anti-liberal aspect of his thinking, but also of his policy, which has already been seen in the treatment of “yellow vests”, in the formation of a climate in which the repressive forces are accountable and in the targeting of immigrant communities under accusation of “Islamic separatism”.

In fact, in his interview, Macron tries to do the same with his previous use of athyrostomy: to create a divisive climate, in order to present his opponents as companions of “extreme” perceptions from the left or the right.

After all, the scapegoats in the French population are sometimes communicating vessels. It is estimated that the remaining unvaccinated are dominated by minority people.

It remains to be seen, however, whether the vast majority of those vaccinated agree with such tactics. (Indicatively, in an Elabe poll for the BFM channel, 53% of the respondents state that they are “shocked” by the president’s athyrostomy, while in an online poll of the newspaper Le Figaro, 90% of the participants reject the new vaccination pass).

And it remains to be seen what kind of plans the Omicron mutation itself has for the French president.