Mr President,
Dear future candidates
for the 2022 presidential election
You are preparing to embrace the destiny of France. As our Republic is constituted, many responsibilities will rest in your hands, and one of them will be at the top of the list. No, it is not purchasing power or the number of jobs created, even if monitoring these indicators remains essential to the future of our society. Above all of those, you must become aware that your term will be that of democracy. Its proper functioning and its strengthening must be your main compass, and to think that the return of foreign investors to France or that obtaining a few points of growth will improve the democratic health of the country is a delusion. We have changed era. Citizens have studied, they inform themselves, they want to be masters of their own destiny. When democracy breaks down, this new people no longer submits, it walks away. What will you build on a desert emptied of men and women? You will produce nothing but disappointment, disgust, rejection and anger. For this reason, we must move from a representative and partisan democracy to a citizen democracy that is participatory and engaging.
The disappearance of the left and the right does not illustrate the desired return of a vertical regime, but rather the desire for a horizontal institution, organised in networks. If you are elected, you will have to love the people more than any other leader in the past. You will have to act with them rather than for them. The task is immense. The challenge demands passion and vision. You will have to be nourished by the idea that voters can be providers of solutions, decision-makers, and sometimes actors. If you give up now, the crises to come will only increase citizens’ indifference. The image of politics will continue to tarnish, and the future will darken. The Covid-19 crisis showed you how fragile our economy and our country are. You will be responsible for building our house of France on rich soil and robust foundations. More than sovereignty, you will need to think about autonomy at every level. That of citizens, by reviewing education and the exercise of democracy, from the municipalities up to the state. That of our energy, food and industrial resources. That of our institutions, our schools and our companies, in order to face an increasingly competitive and aggressive world. If you choose this path, your programme will have to promote and question autonomy by following several steps. First, you will transform our education system so that it builds the critical thinking of our children, equality between men and women, and the autonomy of future citizens and possibly future parents, notably through the teaching of philosophy and self-knowledge from the earliest age. Furthermore, educational projects will open up to all forms of intelligence and school spaces will have to be reinvented, in order to offer a connection with nature and the body. Learning while walking. Your government will also strive to train the teaching body continuously and to leave room for experimentation. In parallel, you will strengthen the individual autonomy of the working classes by reducing the weight of their charges, by increasing the tax on the richest 1% in order to support an increase in the minimum wage, and by promoting housing cooperatives and community land trusts.
Once this vast undertaking has been outlined, the second one will be able to take shape. It will be a matter of inventing the future participatory democracy by encouraging the emergence of local and national citizens’ assemblies. They will take on the task of transforming our Constitution and our institutions so that they work the right way up, that is, from the bottom to the top. The changes will include the disappearance of the Senate in favour of a citizens’ chamber made up of individuals chosen by lot. Members of Parliament, for their part, will be appointed by local citizens’ assemblies made up of elected representatives and people chosen by lot, from whom they will receive their instructions. Within the municipalities, town councils will be required to set up participatory budgets and citizen steering committees for the drafting of major projects or significant changes, such as the urban development plan. With the aim of deeply improving our democracy, you will commit to a complete preservation of the autonomy of the news media so that they can carry out their role in full independence. Company boards of directors will also have to evolve and welcome representatives of local citizens’ assemblies and of employees so that their strategies help to strengthen their resilience, with respect for individuals, the environment and local economic activity. These developments will constitute a foundation for defending the interests of the French people and of the country.
On the international level, you will be responsible for proposing new alliances. To exploitation, you will prefer cooperation. Of all the countries that benefit from our resources, you will ask for compensation for the strengthening of our autonomy. To those that promote our independence — whether energy-related, food-related or linked to the minerals essential to our development — you will propose to build a pact of autonomy in which you will present concrete proposals to strengthen their own resilience. Your government, with the help of Members of Parliament, will work on a metamorphosis of the European Union so that it becomes more democratic and united. You will call for the end of the unanimity rule, which prevents new policies from being pushed forward. You will ensure the taxation of financial transactions and the cancellation of debt in order to give the member countries the means to recover from the crises we have known. You will work so that pacts of autonomy are built within Europe in order to increase the resistance of the weakest to future crises and to climate disruption. You will take part in the drafting of a new Constitution to strengthen the power of the European Parliament and you will ensure that the new members take their instructions from local citizens’ assemblies. You will also act within the UN to influence this global awareness, promoting the search for a collective autonomy of the countries that compose it. To the fierce competition of markets you will oppose a search for cooperation between nations or unions. For this, you will rely on the states that belong to the Francophonie, on our existing alliances and on our embassies.
Your mission will be vast and difficult, but it will offer a vision to the French people who suffer from the absence of direction. Neoliberalism has demonstrated its flaws on several occasions — do not persist! Even a sailboat chooses its course and does not let the wind decide everything for it. Not long ago, we were hearing that the market should decide the sectors of the future, and not the state. Do not let yourself be lulled by these maxims! You will have to be visionary and take risks to imagine France… but you will not have to do it alone! When only the head of state decides, entrusting the vision to the markets is reassuring. If you decide to embrace participatory democracy, you will have contributors, and thus all of France will mobilise at your side! 2022 is a key year, seize it!
To discover the essay on autonomy: https://ludovicdeblois.fr/essai/