Has Macron become an authoritarian president?
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 749 Ratings
🗓️ 12 September 2024
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
French President Emmanuel Macron took two months to appoint a new prime minister. Did Macron's move indicate a turn towards authoritarianism, or has Macron been moving in that direction for years?
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In this episode:
- Rokhaya Diallo (@RokhayaDiallo), Writer and Journalist
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Marcos Bartolome and Ashish Malhotra, with Shraddha Joshi, Hagir Saleh, Duha Mosaad, and me, Natasha del Toro, in for Malika Bilal.
Amy Walters edited this episode. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Joe Plourde mixed this episode.
Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik. Munera Al Dosari and Adam Abou-Gad are our engagement producers.
Alexandra Locke is the Take’s Executive Producer and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Today, how Emmanuel Macron's leadership is changing France. |
| 0:15.7 | The fact that she was saying that she was neither from the left nor from the right is not true. |
| 0:20.3 | He's been from the right |
| 0:21.1 | from the very beginning. Critics say he's become an authoritarian president, but is that a new thing? |
| 0:29.6 | I'm Natasha Delturo, and this is the take. |
| 0:45.0 | It's been two months since France held an unexpected snap parliamentary election. |
| 0:55.6 | France faces potential political paralysis after none of the alliances won an absolute majority of 289 seats needed to form a government on Sunday. Now, the way it usually works is this. The people vote, one party wins, and then the president |
| 1:02.3 | appoints a prime minister. There's this unwritten rule that the prime minister they choose is a |
| 1:08.0 | candidate from the party that won, which in this case would be the |
| 1:11.5 | left-wing coalition. But Macon rejected the left-wing coalition's candidate and appointed |
| 1:17.3 | a new prime minister. And that person is not someone from the left. France finally has a new |
| 1:24.3 | prime minister, Michel Barnier, a conservative politician and former French minister, |
| 1:29.5 | Barnier is best known for his role as the EU's Brexit negotiator. |
| 1:35.9 | Last weekend, the French took to the streets to protest this nomination. |
| 1:41.3 | Left-wing parties are accusing Macron of ignoring the results of the recent legislative elections. |
| 1:48.4 | Chokaya Diallo is no stranger to all of this. She's a journalist, filmmaker, and commentator, |
| 1:54.6 | widely recognized for her work promoting race, gender, and religious equality. |
| 1:59.2 | I'm currently in Paris. Thank you so much for joining us here today. |
| 2:03.6 | We're really excited to speak with you about everything that's going on in France right now. |
| 2:07.6 | So, Chouquet, Michel Barnier, is a member of the right-wing party. |
| 2:13.6 | The left has been saying that there's a crisis of the regime and that this is a stolen election. |
... |
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