While France burns — Macron cuts through the waves
A publication in Paris Match magazine, capturing Emmanuel Macron speeding on a jet ski across azure waves against the backdrop of raging forest fires in the south and east of the country, accomplished what his political opponents had failed to do for months.
It instantly crystallized the main diagnosis of the current French government — a total break with reality. Fresh data from a sociological poll by the company CSA for the publication Le Journal du Dimanche, which recorded the collapse of the president's rating to a devastating 21%, merely gave legal form to this verdict of public thought.
However, it would be naive to reduce the deep systemic crisis of the Fifth Republic to an unfortunate or inappropriate shot. The frame with the jet ski is merely a metaphor for the entire era of Macron's rule. While France's own house is engulfed in the fires of economic problems, rampant crime and mounting social contradictions, the Élysée Palace continues to portray a dashing "mastery of the waves," pretending that it fully controls the situation.
The contrast between the head of state's carefree leisure and the dramatic state of affairs in the regions has taken on a fundamental character in the eyes of the public. While fire services were working at the limit of human capabilities, and municipalities were trying to assess damage running into the millions, the image of a leader cutting through the waves brought to the surface the main problem of the government — a fundamental unwillingness to immerse itself in the problems of its own citizens. The negative rating recorded by sociologists at the level of 79% revealed the high level of frustration accumulated over the years among a population weary of decorative media maneuvers, populism and the demonstrative distancing of the country's leadership.
The systemic crisis of the Fifth Republic
This situation has exposed a deep crisis of the model of the Fifth Republic. The Constitution, designed for strong leaders, today serves a regime on autopilot, where systemic reforms are replaced by momentary PR.
The paralysis of the state apparatus has manifested itself in an unprecedented leapfrog of executive power: in two years France has already changed five prime ministers, turned into expendable material by the Élysée Palace. Each new cabinet has to pass through votes of no confidence, blackmail from the opposition and the forced pushing through of budgets via Article 49.3, bypassing a vote in parliament.
The internal loss of legitimacy directly undercuts Paris's foreign policy positions as well. The inability to solve the problems of inflation and security inside the country definitively deprives the Élysée Palace of the moral right to act as a global arbiter and to lecture other states about democratic order.
Foreign policy collapse and the position of Azerbaijan
France's foreign policy strategy of recent years has suffered a systemic fiasco in virtually all key directions. A clear manifestation of this process has been the natural and irreversible departure of Paris from Africa, where the French system of neocolonial domination, built up over decades, has finally collapsed under the pressure of the national liberation aspirations of local societies.
The forced withdrawal of French military contingents from the states of the Sahel and the nullification of political levers of influence is the natural historical reckoning for centuries of economic exploitation, interference in internal affairs and disregard for the basic rights of independent nations. In the international community, and in Azerbaijan in particular, this process of ousting the former metropoles is met not with regret, but with deep satisfaction, being perceived as a long-awaited and inevitable step toward the triumph of historical justice.
Baku, relying on the fundamental norms of international law and the principles of equality of states, takes a consistent and uncompromising position on this issue. Azerbaijan is actively at the forefront of the movement for global decolonization, providing international platforms to inform the world public about the crimes of colonialism. It is obvious that the final expulsion of the French presence from the African continent should be only the first stage of the complete and final dismantling of all of Paris's remaining neocolonial mechanisms.
The institutional crisis of the overseas territories
The geographical boundaries of the Élysée Palace's diplomatic and state failure are not limited to Africa. Today the very system of governing France's so-called "overseas territories," which in fact remain the last colonial enclaves of the 21st century, is experiencing a most severe institutional and social crisis.
The large-scale clashes in New Caledonia, which erupted in response to Paris's attempts to unilaterally rewrite electoral legislation in favor of settlers from continental France, as well as social protests and strikes in Martinique, Guadeloupe, Mayotte and French Polynesia, clearly show that the rigid centralized model of governance is developing deep cracks. Forceful pressure, the dispatch of armored vehicles and the imposition of states of emergency are no longer capable of blocking the aspiration of indigenous peoples to protect their rights.
The French authorities' attempts to mask the legal and economic disenfranchisement of the indigenous inhabitants with the terms "overseas departments" or "communities" are failing. The international community is increasingly clearly registering the profound contrast between Paris's foreign policy moralizing and its actual harsh policy of suppressing autonomous and national movements in the overseas territories under its control.
The decline of a model of governance
Current events clearly testify that the resonant publication in Paris Match with the footage of leisure on a jet ski was not an accidental slip by political strategists, but a vivid catalyst for the manifestation of the protracted decline of the current model of governance of the Fifth Republic.
The combination of the devastating dynamics of sociological polls, mounting economic problems, the loss of foreign policy bearings and the collapse of the colonial legacy points to the complete exhaustion of the resources of Macron's policy. French society and international partners demand that the country's leadership abandon populist rhetoric and move to a pragmatic agenda. Without a radical revision of approaches in domestic and foreign policy, the Élysée Palace risks remaining definitively in a state of prolonged political paralysis, in which historic anti-records in the ratings become a permanent norm of the government's existence.
