FRANCE Communiqué of the Independent Democratic Workers Party (POID) Macron in the ultra-minority; he has to go, and his policies with him, now!

The second round of the regional and departmental elections confirmed the first: Macron is in the ultra-minority. In the first round, his lists received 3 % of the votes of registered voters. Where they could have held their own in the second round, they finished last. If democracy is the law of the majority, then the majority has spoken: « Out with Macron and his policies, now! « . 

Beyond Macron, the institutional parties have all lost millions of votes compared to the previous election. Even those presented as the « big winners » are in the minority: reappointed as head of the Occitanie region, the Socialist Party’s Carole Delga obtained the vote of one registered voter in five, while the LR (“The Republicans”) Xavier Bertrand and Valérie Pécresse have been « elected » by… 17 and 15 % of the electorate! 

Between the two rounds, the leaders of the institutional parties hammered out the same message: « Voters, get a grip, wake up, vote! « . The result: abstention was at the same level as the first round. They were the ultra-minority on 20 June, ultra-minority they remained on 27 June. 

But a majority expressed themselves « in a vacuum » on 20 and 27 June. Refusing to vote for Macron, the right and the far right, this majority has stamped the illegitimacy of the government, and of the pension reform it wants to revive, and the attack on unemployment insurance, and the redundancy plans it encourages. 

Made up of the vast majority of workers, employees and young people, this majority was not convinced either by the appeals made by the leaders of the « left » parties to rally « in the name of democracy » behind Muselier, former minister of Chirac, candidate of the Republicans, against Mariani, former minister of Sarkozy, candidate of the RN (the far-right “Rassemblement National”) in the Paca region. They rejected the fallacious theory of voting for capitalist parties as a bulwark against the far right. Especially since this policy of sacred union had a precedent, when the MPs of the « left » parties all voted, on 19 March 2020, with their Macronist colleagues and MPs from the right and the far right, for 343 billion euros in « aid » for the capitalists at Macron’s request, thereby depriving schools and hospitals of essential resources. 

This majority has not only been expressed in the mass abstention. In the strikes which are 

multiplying throughout the country, the workers’ demands have been proclaimed: to maintain jobs and employment, to ban redundancies, to provide the necessary means for education, for healthcare and public services, and to refuse to lower wages and increase working hours. 

On the evening of the regional elections, many leaders of the institutional parties declared: « Now ahead lies the next step: the presidential election. » 

Who are they kidding? They pretend not to have understood, but facts are facts: what was rejected on 20 and 27 June was not only Macron, but more generally the system and the institutions that concentrate all power in the hands of a president of the Republic, who is a servant of the capitalists. 

It is the Fifth Republic that has been rejected, the Fifth Republic which gives all the powers to a minority of exploiters and profiteers. If democracy is the law of the majority, then it demands that the power to decide be returned to this majority. It therefore demands that the capitalist Fifth Republic be replaced by the Republic of the majority, the Republic of the workers and the youth. 

It is urgent that the people take the power to decide into their own hands. It is urgent to elect a Constituent Assembly that abrogates the Fifth Republic and all the anti-worker, anti-social and anti-democratic counter-reforms, confiscating the hundreds of billions of capitalist profits to allocate them to the urgent needs of the working people, to healthcare, to youth, to employment. Yes; a Constituent Assembly that takes into its own hands the power to decide on imperative measures to preserve jobs and public services and to ban redundancies altogether. 

There is no other way out for those who are democratically minded. 

To debate these proposals, the Independent Democratic Workers’ Party proposes that large assemblies of workers, activists and young people be held, to establish together what the urgent demands of the situation are. 

More than ever, the POID is determined to act so that the cause of unity triumphs: unity for the satisfaction of all the demands, unity to oust Macron and his policies, unity to put an end to the Fifth Republic and for power to return to the hands of the working people.  

The POID, the Independent Democratic Workers’ Party, Monday, June 28, 7 pm