France in chaos. Argentina in chaos, but $20B (and American soybean farmers in chaos). Japan in chaos. Danish people are loading up on emergency supplies because of drone invasions.
I'm jamming to "(Falling Like) Dominoes" by Donald Byrd.
What are thoughts about broader issues of a fixed-term legislature, versus one that requires the confidence of the legislature and could be created.. and collapsed very quickly? The constant teetering on the edge of deadlock and collapse seems to create a lot of instability.
A more specific question: Is the design of the French legislative system to blame for this?
The legislature hasn’t collapsed - parliamentarians still have their position. There is no stable government able to command a majority. If a government can’t command a majority of a legislature, it can’t legislate, so it can’t meaningfully govern. You could proceed bill by bill, but that’s a different kind of instability.
The French 5th republic (~= constitution v5) places stability above debate and compromise. Or at least that's what they were going for when the 4th republic was scrapped.
Isn't that essentially the definition of a parliamentary government? That would be a MAJOR change to the constitution, I'd imagine. Googling... France is on its 15th constitution, and 5th "Republic", so... I guess it's not as big a deal as I thought.
Frankly, America's 3-house, fixed-term system works, except when a demagogue controls the legislative branch (it works until it doesn't). Term-limited presidency is frighteningly obviously important.
France's executive branch is still not failing as well as Italy, but they're giving it every try at least.
Am french, I can say that most of the voters whatch TV and mainstream medias.
Owned by the french oligarchs (les milliardaires comme on "aime" les appeler). They actually successfully make people think "right wing" is not left or right (for far right) or even centrist (modem), and all the left spectrum is extremist terrorist. Racism, islamophobia, lgbtphobia, anti feminism, and others kyriarchies are normalized.
What make you think the elections are fairs in this context ?
That's not what the term "free and fair" elections means though. To be considered fair, there can be no government interference of the voting process (ex: ballot stuffing, voter suppression) and its results must be accepted.
Media manipulation exists of course, all democracies have this to a certain extent. But France is actually not too bad compared to other countries.
Worth noting that president Macron's refusal to have the left (Tue NFP, strongest list in the last elections) form a government was to prevent political chaos. Rofl...
The problem here is that the far left (LFI) and far right (RN) are both strong, but neither make a majority by far.
In the middle is Macron's party, that everyone hates, but against any other party, he wins, as the majority doesn't want either the far left or the far right to pass.
NFP is a left party alliance, including the moderate left (PS), made necessary because no party in the alliance could win by itself, but they don't really like each other.
It means that it can't be anything but a mess, and I am convinced that that's part of Macron's strategy, as he can only win by default.
I think that presidential election will be fun, as Macron can't be reelected and there is a huge gap to claim.
Everyone in France know that the NFP has no chance to even dream of ruling the country.
It's a conglomerate of far left, left and ecologist. Each one hate the other two, they did it for the election to be able to have only one candidate per location.
As soon as it was over, the NFP died and now the NFP is just the far left.
The far left has absolutely no chance to even dream of ruling France. They got a minority of highly motivated follower but the remaining of France population hate them.
I'm jamming to "(Falling Like) Dominoes" by Donald Byrd.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voIprW-gxXk&list=RDvoIprW-gx...