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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   23862 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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The constitution says

le président de la République est élu pour cinq ans au suffrage universel direct. Nul ne peut exercer plus de deux mandats consécutifs

The whole question is this allows for a third nonconsecutive one or not. If the limitation is of more that two terms back to back or if the limitation is anything beyond two consecutive terms.

The literal reading of the text is ambiguous, though it's clear the intention way always to cap a man at 10 years.

Why put the word consecutive at all in there if the intention was to forbid nonconsecutive terms?

The issue seems to be the following: if Macron resigns, the president of the senate will become interim president, and Macron will be nothing. At the same time, this will trigger elections for the presidency.

Assume now that Macron is a candidate for this election. Is this his 3rd consecutive mandate (and thus unconstitutional) or is the intervening interim presidency enough to give him a blank slate for another 10 years?

It would be his 3rd consecutive term. I don't think it would be constitutional. He could run again in 5 years, however.

Let me put it this way: Macron has already had two consecutive terms. Does this make him part of "Nul" or not? Is he now off limits to the presidency or does the limitation specifically limit how consecutive mandates can be? It's not clear.

I expect the CC to attempt to interpret the intent of the legislator here, which would likely allow for an ex president returning to political life but likely not procedural tricks to get around the rule.

The Constitution says no more than 2 consecutive terms. Since three is more than two, he can't have a third consecutive term. Unless I am misled there is nothing at all said about nonconsecutive terms.

What about 3 terms, all with a term in between? That clearly complies, the intention can't be to cap at 10 years overall.

The argument as I understand it is that the intention of the legislator was to prevent a single man ruling for too long whilst still allowing for enough time to enact an ambitious long term political program.

In this sense, having someone do two terms, retire, and then come back and do two more would probably be fine (though you'd have to start young). Your scenario would probably be fine too, maybe even if we're talking about a Putin/Medvedev situation.

But doing two, then doing some procedural shenanigans where you resign on your last day so somebody else is in the seat and it doesn't count as consecutive? That probably wouldn't be fine.

The question then is where on the spectrum between those two Macron's scheme is, and where on it would the CC put the line.

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