this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
196 points (99.0% liked)

World News

39019 readers
2666 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The President is elected by the people, what you call popular vote I believe. The President then nominates the Prime Minister from whatever party holds the majority in the Parliament. In this election, it isn't the presidential party that got the majority, so Attal (the exiting Prime Minister from the presidential party) resigns.

Macron could also resign I guess, since it was his idea to dissolve the Parliament in the first place, but it's pretty uncommon.

Note that this is for the French system. Starmer is British and has to deal with whatever dumbster fire of a system they have on his side of the Channel

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for the reply. Can you explain the bit about ‘dissolve the Parliament’? What does that entail?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The parliament is elected from the 577 "circonscriptions", or small bit of continental and non continental France + French living abroad, as seen on this map. They represent all of France in front of the government, they vote for or against laws at a national level. They do not take care of any local politic.

Normally the parliament is elected every 5 years, a few weeks after the presidential election so the president can have a parliament on the same side as his.

But the among the president powers, he can dissolve the parliament, so those 577 deputies are sent home and a new election takes place. It is usually done to have the same political party everywhere so passing new laws is easy.

As the government (prime minister and ministers) generally comes from the most represented party in the parliament, if the majority shifts to another party then the prime minister have to resign (all his ministers are included) and a new government will be made from the new majority (in today’s case, the left, even if the president is central-right).

The president have to wait one year before dissolving the parliament again. So he could technically dissolve it again until the next presidential election in 2027.

So for today it means that the PM and his government have to resign (which is done). The president will then have to choose a new PM from the leading party at the parliament (left Front Populaire) and will have to work with a government not agreeing with him.

It is named a cohabitation, between a right side president and left side government, which by itself is not such a big deal as countries like Switzerland works like that, a perpetual compromise between various political views. But France (or US, or ???) is not used to that, so this could lead to a government achieving nothing cause every political side will vote laws according to their own views and nothing is accepted.