The referendum proposed by Marine Le Pen, a break with republican principles – Le Monde

Editorial of the “World”. The rule of law, in other words respect for the law by everyone, rulers and ruled alike, is neither an archaic straitjacket nor a simple subject of intellectual acrobatics for lawyers. This is nothing less than what distinguishes a democracy from an authoritarian regime. It is also the principle which makes it possible to preserve civil peace by having our disputes settled by application of rules accepted by all. Supreme law organizing our institutions, the Constitution is the keystone of this rule of law. This shows how worried the “referendum bill”, the centerpiece of the project of Marine Le Pen, candidate for the supreme magistracy. It is not a question of modernizing democracy, of remedying the crisis of representativeness that our country is experiencing, but of upsetting the republican foundations to institutionalize the “national priority”, in other words the principle of discrimination between French people and foreigners. It is also a question of abolishing the acquisition of nationality by birth in France (jus soli) – which even Vichy did not dare – and of making the application of European rules optional and therefore of initiating an unassumed process of breaking with the European Union. Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Marine Le Pen wants to govern by referendum bypassing Parliament and the Constitutional Council This new Constitution wanted by the candidate of the National Rally (RN) would violate both the Declaration of Human Rights of 1789 (principle of equality before the law), the preamble to the 1946 Constitution (prohibition of discrimination on grounds of origin) and the current Supreme Law adopted in 1958, which incorporates the two previous texts. Unable to have this real change of regime adopted by the normal procedure for revising the Constitution (article 89), which requires the approval of deputies and senators, Ms Le Pen wishes to force through by using article 11 on the referendum. , which makes it possible to dispense with Parliament but excludes constitutional revisions. Showdown with the Constitutional Council Such an approach presupposes violating the Constitution and overriding the high court which is its guardian, the Constitutional Council. The latter, which the 1958 text sets up as the guarantor of the “regularity” of referendums, in fact declared itself competent in 2000 to judge the validity of the decree convening voters for a referendum, and therefore the constitutionality of the draft law submitted to the vote which is annexed to this decree. Ms. Le Pen’s project therefore presupposes a double showdown with the Constitutional Council, both on the use of Article 11 and on the constitutionality of her “national priority”. Technical, complex, this legal debate must not hide the central issue: Marine Le Pen’s referendum project amounts to breaking with fundamental republican principles by playing the people “sole sovereign” against the rule of law, in the manner Polish and Hungarian illiberal regimes. The most serious thing would be that the candidate manages to make people forget this essential part of her presidential project by drowning it in the “social” discourse that she is now deploying. Also read the forum: Article reserved for our subscribers “Like all authoritarian leaders, Marine Le Pen wants to dynamite liberal democracy by appealing to the people” Far from translating her peaceful and reassuring words, her plan to ransack the Constitution and of institutionalized discrimination would fuel anger and violence. It must not become the “elephant in the room”, an enormity that no one would see and dare to denounce for fear of a supposedly counterproductive stigmatization. In reality, it is an undertaking to dismantle the rule of law to be denounced and resolutely rejected. Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Marine Le Pen puts pressure on France 2 to choose the journalists who question her Le Monde