PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron accepted the resignation of the French government on Tuesday, but asked Prime Minister Gabriel Attal to head up a caretaker administration for now, cabinet sources said.

French politics have been in gridlock since an inconclusive snap election earlier this month, with parties in the National Assembly scrambling to put together a governing coalition and no successor to Mr Attal in sight.

Mr Macron made the announcement on Tuesday at the first cabinet meeting since his allies got roundly beaten in the snap parliamentary election he called to “clarify” the political landscape.

Macron, Attal still hope to find right-of-centre majority in parliament

Mr Macron told the ministers that he would accept Mr Attal’s resignation “at the end of the day” but ask him to stay on “for some weeks”, probably until after the Paris Olympics, which open on July 26, meeting participants said.

This gives political parties more time to build a governing coalition after the July 7 election runoff left the lower house without an overall majority.

A broad alliance called the New Popular Front (NFP) — which includes Socialists, Communists, Greens and the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) — won the most seats, with 193 in the 577-strong lower chamber.

Mr Macron’s allies came second with 164 seats and the far-right National Rally (RN) third with 143.

The divided NFP alliance has been scrambling to come up with a consensus candidate for prime minister.

But internal conflicts — notably between the LFI and the more moderate Socialists — have thwarted all efforts to find a personality able to survive a confidence vote in parliament.

‘Shameful’

Over the weekend, the Socialists torpedoed the hopes of Huguette Bello, 73, a former communist member of parliament and the president of the regional council in France’s overseas territory La Reunion, who had support from the other left-wing parties.

The LFI, in turn, rejected 73-year-old Laurence Tubiana, an economist and climate specialist without political affiliation, who had the backing of the Socialists, Communists and Green party.

Leftist lawmaker Francois Ruffin on Tuesday called the NFP’s infighting “shameful”, a day after Green member of parliament Sandrine Rousseau said the disagreements made her “very angry”.

On Saturday, Mr Attal was voted in as leader of his party’s National Assembly contingent, as he eyes his own future outside government, saying that he would “contribute to the emergence of a majority concerning projects and ideas”.

Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2024