Examination of the text did not even start that it already divides within the common base. The so -called “PLM” reform, the examination of which must start on March 20 in the hemicycle, has been the subject of an showdown in the past few hours. The text, let us remember, aims to reform the voting system in Paris, Lyon and Marseille in order to allow voters, in addition to the choice of district advisers, to designate the municipal councilors sitting at the central town hall, as in the other cities. The measure was in fact erected to the rank of priorities by François Bayrou, the first to have been publicly put on the table after the adoption of budgetary texts.
The reform, pushed for months by four Parisian macronist deputies, Sylvain Maillard, David Amiel, Olivia Grégoire and Jean Laussucq, has never been unanimous. And the reserved club has just been a new representative in the person of Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of the National Assembly.
As our colleagues from Politico revealed this Wednesday morning, the fourth character of the State decided to seize the Council of State for opinion on this bill. Nothing obliged it, since only bills, the texts which emanate from the government, are in principle held in this a priori administrative control.
Sylvain Maillard extinguishes the request of Yaël Braun-Pivet
The president of the National Assembly, with this referral, would notably like to ensure the possibility for parliamentarians to modify a voting system less than a year before the election. To date, the electoral code provides that it cannot be a change in the electoral regime (…) in the year preceding the first round of a ballot. Except that this constraint does not appear in the Constitution, which makes certain specialists say that the PLM law could perfectly return to this rule.
But Sylvain Maillard decided not to be done. According to our information, the Paris deputy has decided to oppose this referral to the Council of State. As the author of this bill, he has perfectly the right. This approach, in fact, therefore extinguishes the request of Yaël Braun-Pivet. The Council of State will therefore not look at the text before its exam. “You can imagine that in two years, the text has been studied very closely by many lawyers,” he defends, recognizing that certain points “will have to be the subject of a parliamentary debate”, such as the question of the majority premium or the prerogatives which will be entrusted to the district mayors in the event of the adoption of the law.
The deputy also feared that the referral of the Council of State would come to postpone the examination of the text, supposed to start on March 12 in committee. From there to suspect Yaël Braun-Pivet to seek obstruction …