Hours after appointing a cabinet, Lecornu, the new prime minister of France, steps down. Following controversy over the cabinet lineup, French President Emmanuel Macron accepts the resignation of the recently appointed prime minister.
The country’s long-running political crisis has been made worse by the resignation of French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, who took office only weeks ago and named a cabinet just hours later.
Lecornu, who was appointed over a month ago, had been under growing pressure in recent weeks as he battled to get a budget through France’s divided parliament in the face of a debt crisis.
President Emmanuel Macron has accepted the resignation of his close ally, the French presidency announced in a statement on Monday.His government was one of the shortest-lived in French history; he appointed his ministers on Sunday night but resigned from office hours later.
The first meeting of the new cabinet was scheduled for Monday afternoon, but the list of new ministers infuriated both supporters and opponents, even though Lecornu had pledged to “break” with the approach of his unpopular predecessor, François Bayrou.
Several members of Lecornu’s cabinet had been part of the previous administration. “Each political party wanted the other to adopt its entire program, but I was willing to make concessions,” Lecornu stated outside the prime minister’s office.
In a new development, Macron ordered the departing prime minister to hold final negotiations with other political groups by Wednesday night in order to “define a platform for action and stability for the country,” according to the Elysée, even though he had resigned.
The nature of Lecornu’s assignment was unclear at first. According to the French constitution, Macron is free to re-appoint Lecornu as prime minister if he so chooses.
Following Macron’s announcement of snap elections in 2024, the French Parliament has been split into far-right and far-left blocs was Macron’s fifth prime minister in the last two years, and the opposition demanded that the president quit and that fresh elections be held in response to his abrupt departure.
“The only wise decision is to return to the polls,” Marine Le Pen, a prominent far-right figure and member of the National Rally party, the largest in parliament, said local media, referring to Lecornu’s government as “pathetic.”
Party head Jordan Bardella repeated the statement, stating that “National Rally will be ready to assume its responsibilities.
” While Francois-Xavier Bellamy, the leader of the much smaller right-wing Republicans party, which collaborated with Macron to staff his cabinet, stated that his party had nothing “to fear from a dissolution” of parliament, Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, also called for Macron to resign.
Financial concerns have been brought on by the possibility that France won’t adopt a budget. The announcement of Lecornu’s resignation caused a more than 2 percent decline in the benchmark CAC 40 index of blue-chip firms.
SOURCE: Aljazeera News
