The Olympic Games, one of the most important sporting and media events in the world, have always been crossed by political, economic and geopolitical issues. With the return of war to Europe (Ukraine – Russia) and the latent economic crisis, Paris 2024 is no exception. Especially since the dissolution of the Legislative Assembly, the political crisis looms over the 2024 Olympic Games. In this context, the opening ceremony was held this Friday in Paris, after a morning marked by the sabotage of a part of the train network.
Widely acclaimed, the show directed by Thomas Jolly paradoxically chose to highlight symbols that are totally opposed to what the French State is: popular culture, racial and gender diversity, the French revolutionary tradition, etc. A hypocrisy very typical of Macron, who amused himself by tweeting at the same time about the performance of Aya Nakamura (French singer of Malian origin) alongside the Republican Guard.
Although the direction of this great spectacle, which almost gave the impression that France was at the forefront of progress, aroused the anger of the extreme right, the only truly progressive symbols were anti-colonial: the gesture of the Algerian delegation paying homage to the victims of October 17, 1961 (when a brutal and bloody repression of Algerians – during the Algerian war – by the Paris police ended with hundreds of demonstrators killed, many of them thrown into the Seine), the whistles as the Israeli delegation passed by and the notable presence of a Palestinian delegation.
The overall success of the ceremony spared Macron a snub, in a situation that remains tense, however. Having managed to stay in power using the most undemocratic mechanisms of the regime, the head of state again ruled out on Tuesday the prospect of a government of the New Popular Front, before declaring a “political truce” until mid-August. A way of putting pressure on his potential allies, from Wauquiez (of the right-wing party Les Républiques – LR -) to sectors of the Socialist Party, to reach an agreement on a coalition government, as Aurore Bergé (recently elected MP, of right-wing orientation) points out, who warns “that she will work, like others, behind the scenes, to create a new stable government package, so that the head of state can appoint a right-wing government from mid-August.”
Far from any “truce”, the Head of State is banking on the “Olympic Games effect” to remedy the deep discredit that affects him and to try to solidify his camp undermined by divisions. To do so, Macron has expressed his desire to run for president again, indicating, according to the daily Le Monde, that he is following in the footsteps of “Charles de Gaulle and François Mitterrand, presidents respectively during the Winter Olympics in Grenoble in 1968 and Albertville in 1992. “At the international level, the Head of State received around forty French and, above all, foreign leaders at the Elysée Palace to try to reassure the population about the political instability.
Symbols that are far from resolving the government’s contradictions. While it was able to count on the conciliatory policy of the General Confederation of Workers for the Olympic Games, symbolised by the video of Bernard Thibault carrying the Olympic flame, the political crisis is far from being resolved, despite the convergence between LR and Macron’s party around a racist, security-oriented and austere project. An alliance that will not be enough to find a majority and which could, in the absence of a solution in Parliament, prepare the ground for a crisis of the regime in the autumn, in the face of which workers and the popular classes will have to organise themselves to impose a solution favourable to their interests.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
