The French legislative elections ended with an unprecedented situation in the history of France: the president's movement was defeated, but no absolute majority will emerge in the National Assembly. Immanuel Is Macron still a credible interlocutor for his African counterparts?
The second round of the French legislative ended with a slap for the presidential majority "Together" of Emmanuel Macron. The French head of state is the first president of the Fifth French Republic to be deprived of an absolute majority in the National Assembly.
If the left-wing coalition, Jean-Luc Mélenchon's NUPES, did not obtain an absolute majority either, an unprecedented situation reigns over French politics.
So, of course, Mélenchon will probably not reach the French prime minister's office, but this poses a real problem for the current Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne. If she does not gather enough deputies (60) in support of the increasingly unpopular French president, Borne will have to resign from her post. Or else she will have to make a lot of concessions within the French government.
It would also be the best way out for Macron and his entourage. What is certain is that with a disparate French political scene, Macron risks failing to govern his own country. Certainly more busy saving his mandate, Macron should be less concerned about African countries in the next five years.
A messy president
Seen from Africa, Macron is very reminiscent of Sarkozy. President divisive, warmonger and ill-advised on African diplomacy. After having alienated Mali, to the point of isolating it, Macron is also considered persona non grata by Burkina Faso or Guinea. In addition, he maintains stormy relations with Algeria, Morocco, Gabon, Congo, Tunisia and Togo. In reality, apart from Niger and Chad, “Françafrique” is increasingly a distant memory, shaken up everywhere by Chinese, Turkish and Russian diplomacy, among others.
Cameroonian historian Achille Mbembe, yet at the origin of the new format of the Africa-France Summit, did not fail to criticize Macron's African policy. Mbembe believes that Macron does not like "questions that bother critical African intellectuals" because "they risk publicly questioning the three pillars of French politics - militarism, mercantilism and paternalism mixed, as always, with racism ".
Read: Macron: what is this slap called?
Which brings up another question: what do Africans know about Macron? His predecessor François Hollande, unknown to the battalion. Nicholas Sarkozy? It symbolizes the war in Libya and the rise of the CAC 40 in French-speaking Africa. But Macron is best known for being the sworn enemy of the Malian government.
In addition to the Malian file, it was the French president who pushed Gabon and Togo into the arms of the Commonwealth, greatly limiting the mobility of Africans to France. Emmanuel Macron is also the president who got slapped, and who, speaking of African women, simply said: “Show me an educated woman who decides to have 7, 8 or 9 children”.
And vis-à-vis his African counterparts, Emmanuel Macron is also the one who put them on the sidelines during the Africa-France Summit.
Macron condemned to manage internal affairs?
A "ankylosed approach to Franco-African relations" according to journalist Mehdi Ba. If, during the laborious five-year term that is before Emmanuel Macron - he still has to manage to convert 60 deputies to form a government in France - he decides to opine, as usual, on the policy of African countries , will it be believable?
Read: Africa-France Summit: Macron and the 40 Burkinabés
Last Friday, in a column entitled "Macron to Africans: 'I didn't understand you'", the Courrier de l'Atlas recalled the ineffectiveness of Macron's speech towards Africa. The French head of state compared Ukraine to Libya, calling for "collecting evidence" on "war crimes".
"There would thus be so much to say about the mystery surrounding the death of Gaddafi, the assassination of Thomas Sankara, the massacres of Rwanda, the victims of numerous coups d'etat or the parachuting of French 'prefects' at the head of African states, the muscular intervention of French elite troops to subdue dissatisfied populations and come after to claim compensation from the spooks of France like what happened with Gbagbo in Côte d'Ivoire, etc. “, insists the magazine financed by the former head of the Moroccan government Aziz Akhannouch.
Today, with the defeat of Macron's coalition in the French legislative elections, it is rather "sweeping in front of his door" that the French president will have to do. As for the African countries that are economically and diplomatically close to France, they will no doubt have to expect to negotiate with a president who cannot get his parliament to vote on anything.
For some, it will be an opportunity to take a breather and extricate themselves from French pressure. For others, the time to bet on other allies better able to work on real bilateral cooperation.