Valls would love to snub the voting Thévenoud, but it’s impossible – Le Nouvel Observateur

Valls would love to snub the voting Thévenoud, but it's impossible – Le Nouvel Observateur

While Thomas Thévenoud has not waived his deputy, despite his departure from the PS, Prime Minister Manuel Valls was keen to put the record straight this Wednesday, Sept. 12 at Questions to Government House National, including announcing he did not want the voice of former Secretary of State during the confidence vote next Tuesday. Manuel Valls was first launched:

I do not understand today, even though none of us has any power over him, I do not understand that responsibility or conscience, there is now a member of the National Assembly “

Prime Minister then referred to the confidence vote next week and the thorny case of potential voting Thomas Thévenoud.

Even though none of us has the power to stop to come and vote, if not by persuasion, I will assume that his vote, if positive, can not be recognized ” .

The head of government also denounced “behavior, the facts alleged against him and carelessness” of the ephemeral Secretary of State for Foreign Trade who ” hurts the Republic, France, to the left. “

Valls has no power to alter the outcome of a vote

This position is unique under the Fifth Republic, Parliamentary memory, but in a more dramatic context, it has a famous precedent under the Fourth Republic in 1954, President Council Pierre Mendes-France announced, asking confidence, that he would resign if he were in his inauguration Communist votes in his favor.

Before Geneva negotiate peace in Indochina with the Viet Minh independence and communist, Pierre Mendes-France would not weaken its position depending on the PCF supported the Vietminh. In the end, “PMF” got an overwhelming majority of 419 votes against 47 (and 143 abstentions), and was not to his post at the hundred Communist deputies.

No more than the time Pierre Mendes-France which he likes to refer, Manuel Valls today has the power to change the outcome of a vote. If he got the confidence to one vote, that of Thomas Thévenoud , it would be passed, and nothing would force the Prime Minister to hand over to François Hollande’s resignation government.

However, nothing would prevent him either to resign on his own, as indeed it did in late August after the provocative statements of Arnaud Montebourg. That would be the head of state to rename it or look for another solution, new prime minister or dissolution.

But this hypothesis is unlikely, because even if environmentalists voted against him and that about forty slingers Socialist deputies abstained, Manuel Valls should keep a majority of a few votes.

His statement however the undeniable political advantage to stand out dramatically from its ex-Secretary of State Foreign Trade, and increase pressure to resign from the Assembly. Thomas denied the vote Thévenoud has “a certain allure”, commented the UMP Hervé Mariton.

Le Nouvel Observateur