French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne faced a motion of no-confidence brought against her by a broad alliance of left-wing opponents. The 61-year-old head of state comfortable survived the motion.
Requiring an absolute majority of 289 votes to ensure the government’s fall, the no-confidence motion fell short with only 146 lawmakers voting in support of the motion. Nupes alliance – the largest bloc in opposition to Emmanuel Macron’s centrist ‘Ensemble!’ grouping, held the motion to make the French PM’s life difficult in Parliament. It was more a show of intent rather than a real attempt to unseat the PM.
Despite the Nupes alliance comprising of 151 MPs, five of them abstained from voting and this could be looked upon as a positive sign by Borne and her reigning government.
“We should be debating the issues the French are facing, this non-confidence vote is unfair”, the prime minister told the parliament just before the voting began. “This non-confidence vote is just political tactics (…)Let’s switch together to a culture of compromise,” she added.
According to the Hindustan Times, despite having a comfortable majority in the lower house during his first term, newly-reelected Macron lost his absolute majority in parliament in June’s legislative elections and can no longer count on the chamber to rubber stamp his reform agenda.
Instead, Macron and his allies will have to negotiate legislations on a bill-by-bill basis which means a lot of control on reforms will be out of his hands.
The no-confidence motion had been expected to fail due to the fact that the conservative Les Republicains party and Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National insisting they would abstain from voting.
Mathilde Panot, head of The France Unbowed group, the main component of the Nupes alliance, said in the Assembly, “You are, Mrs Borne, a democratic anomaly (…) you have no legitimacy, nor politic neither parliamentarian.”
“Those who won’t vote this no-confidence motion will be supporters of your policies,” she added, just before voting began.
With the no-confidence motion done and dusted, the French Parliament is expected to begin discussions on its 20 billion euro ($20.13 billion) inflation-relief package which was unveiled last week.
