French presidential candidate Macron defends “method of real shifts in power”

French presidential hopeful Emmanual Macron on Tuesday defended his “method of real shifts in power” and specified the manner in which he plans to run the country if he gets elected. (Photo: Emmanuel Macron/Facebook)

PARIS—French presidential hopeful Emmanual Macron on Tuesday defended his “method of real shifts in power” and specified the manner in which he plans to run the country if he gets elected.

The founder of the “En Marche!” movement has entered into the fray to respond to his detractors who claim that, if he is elected, he will not be able to govern, for lack of a coherent parliamentary majority.

“Our objective is to turn the page on the last five years, and more broadly the last 20 years, with the political practices which accompanied them,” Macron, the former Economy Minister of sitting President Francois Hollande, told a press conference, at his campaign headquarters.

“I wanted to present the method of real changes in power that we are in the process of constructing, that between powerlessness and efficiency, between the world of yesterday and the new world,” said Macron.

He said his objective is “to make work together those who share our project, regardless of the camp from which they come,” “to change customs, and also faces, because we cannot make something new with the old.”

The “En Marche!” founder denounced the “tick-tock of the right and left,” “the ministers chosen for their supposed political weight and without any other legitimacy than the fact to be apparatchiks,” as well as the political class “still too made up of men over 50 years-old.”

Macron, shoulder to shoulder in polls with the president of the far-right National Front (FN) Marine Le Pen in the race for the presidency, clearly wanted to cut short the recurring critiques which call into doubt his ability to govern and to dispose of a parliamentary majority.

The presidential hopeful first traced the contours of his government which he says will not be run by a newcomer but by an experienced political manager, “chosen by their skills.”

The government will be cut back and only contain 15 ministers, appointed for their strengths and not “for their political weight,” he said.

Half will be women, “including ministries in the foreground,” he said. A “consequential part” of the minsters will come from civil society, continued Macron.

The candidate for “En Marche!” also committed himself to putting an end to the “hyper-management” of the President of the Republic. Ministers will work under the authority of the first among them, “with a clear roadmap” and “according to the objectives (which will be) fixed,” he declared.

The former economy minister also made it clear that despite having support from both the right and the left, he would not be taken hostage by the different political sensibilities who backed him. “All the sponsorships are welcome, but no sponsorship will stop me from reforming and advancing,” he insisted.

As the first round of voting in presidential elections draws near, the question of June legislative elections has begun to become more pressing. If the candidates of “En Marche!” aren’t carried by the wave of presidential elections, a Macron presidency would be constrained to form a parliamentary coalition, even to form a cohabitation government from the start of his term, according to his detractors.

Macron swept the hypothesis aside, by saying, “My government will be able to rely on a parliamentary majority which will be obtained thanks to the coherence the French have always demonstrated.”

“The movement will be open but coherent, it will be a majority of efficiency. We will invest 577 candidates under the banner of the presidential majority. There will be one half made up of female candidates and they will be irreproachable from a legal point of view,” he said. “There will be no agreement of political machinery.”

Macron also indicated that the naming of candidates for the legislative elections would be done “by successive waves” starting “the day after the second round of presidential elections” scheduled for May 7.

The presidential candidate ended his statement by evoking the numerous undecided voters who, according to several surveys, confirm that they still haven’t chosen who they will vote for on April 23, during the first round of the elections. According to those polls, close to half of Macron’s potential voters would still be particularly unstable.