"Yellow Vests": the elected LREM against the backlash

The rumble of "yellow vests" or the boomerang of dégagisme for the deputies The Republic in march (LREM)? Elected in favor of a big mess-all sweeping the traditional parties in 2017, these novices promised a deep oxygenation of political life and a National Assembly more representative of the country. Claiming the civil society, the neo-elected believed themselves more in tune with the reality of the French than the "Professionals" politics. And this, even if managers, intellectual professions and super-educated entrepreneurs were overrepresented in the Macronist contingent.

stall

With the controversy over the rise in fuel prices to which a lot of grievances are aggregating, it is nevertheless the great return of the critics who aimed at their predecessors. Certainly, it is the most radical yellow vests that go so far as to demand the resignation of Emmanuel Macron or the dissolution of the National Assembly – an idea on which surfed Marine Le Pen, seeing it. "the only solution" to get out of the crisis.

The fact remains that the LREM deputies, whether they have visited the dams or held meetings with the yellow vests in their permanence, do not escape the disconnected and technocratic process. "There is a paradox in dealing with these reproaches today. We are a bit caught up in our own trap ", admits one of them. "In 2017, we benefited from a form of soft, open, benevolent disengagement, a move that bypbaded existing parties, remembers the Paris deputy Hugues Renson. It must be said that this promise to bring citizens and their elected representatives together is not fully fulfilled. " An observation that echoes the confession of Emmanuel Macron when he acknowledged that he had not "Not really managed to reconcile the French people with its leaders".

In the majority, one rebadures oneself by stressing that this distrust is first of all a legacy of the past, that it is about a deep malaise impossible to dissipate in eighteen months. "What is called into question is a rise in the inefficiency of political action for decades, which we have inherited," noted last week the boss of the group LREM, Gilles Le Gendre. "We are put in the same basket as our predecessors. Yet we act differently but we have not yet had the time to show our results, temporizes Cédric Roussel, elected of Alpes-Maritimes.

But others admit that if the stall is old, the current power – this "New world" self-proclaimed – nor does it have the way to answer it. "That the results are not there yet, it is normal, but if one gives in addition the impression of a distant power, cold, even contemptuous, one reinforces the anger", entrusts an ex-socialist who has become LREM. "We pay the past, but we also amplify it," engages one of his colleagues, struck to have crossed "Some voters of Macron" on the dams.

If it had made renewal a campaign argument, the majority became aware since the beginning of the crisis of yellow vests of inexperience in heavy weather and its lack of local anchorage. "This inability to anticipate and capture what is happening is precisely because we are new, justifies another deputy. With a party like ours, created in vitro, we would have to crisscross the territory but it is difficult to mesh. We are organizing our weakening. "

"Fire"

Finding unfair criticism, many of them recall that they have been alerting for months about the discontents that rise in their district: feeling of abandonment of rural territories, expectations on purchasing power, etc. Without finding a listening ear at the top of the state. "We pbaded messages. We are a little fed up with the technos of the government who think deficit reduction and not inequality. It's us who go to the fire while the guys are stashed in the cabinets ", annoys a walker from the first hour. Another one abounds: "We do politics in the old fashioned way but without having the job or the cunning of the old. So, besides, we do it badly. " Cautious of the risk of becoming like the others, some call for "Take over the administration and the senior civil service." "That's why we engaged in politics, recalls Jean-Baptiste Moreau, elected in Creuse. We have to stop with the techno language and the elements of language. We must talk again with our guts. "

Laura Equy