“Our republican institutions are today challenged by radical elements”

Ihe common good, the general interest or the “everyone’s happiness”, set out in the preamble to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, constitute the very essence of our Republic. It is a state of mind, that of wanting to live together, of embracing a common destiny, beyond our differences and our singularities, beyond our individual interests or our differences of opinion.

This republican pact is based on democracy. Through our votes, we set ourselves common rules of social functioning. Fruits of a majority expression, these rules become those of all. Shared and accepted, they allow us to form a society and to protect ourselves from clashes of community and contradictory interests, the outcome of which is either anarchy or dictatorship, that is to say the confiscation of society at the benefit of a few.

This republican pact is today damaged, mistreated by a society forgetful of its history and dominated by immediacy, by a society fractured by the media omnipresence of protesting minorities persuaded to hold the truth and moralizing to the point of becoming authoritarian. and violent, by a society where individual interest takes precedence over the collective and the general interest.

Refusal of the democratic process

Never have our laws and regulations left so much room for the expression of opinions before a decision of general interest is taken: public consultations, public consultations, public inquiries, etc. However, we have never seen so many phenomena of violence, which are nothing other than the refusal of the democratic process which has come to an end.

A territory acquires a structure to save its agriculture in the face of drought, and Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres) becomes the scene of unacceptable confrontations; the legislator – after several weeks of debate – adopts the pension reform, and the social movements are held hostage by thugs until the indignity of May 8, when unacceptable excesses occurred on the sidelines of a demonstration in Lyon; a municipality, Saint-Brevin (Loire-Atlantique), after a long administrative procedure, accepts the establishment of a reception center, and the house of its mayor is burned down!

In 1960, visionary men had the courage to build the Serre-Ponçon dam, in the Hautes-Alpes, going so far as to move a village, to ensure the energy and economic security of an entire region. What would it be today?

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