Emmanuel Macron will declare Martial Law if Marie La Pen wins overall majority next week.
The elites are not about to give up their stranglehold on power any time soon.
Macron has vowed to stop Marie La Pen seizing power 'at any cost' and will reportedly declare a ‘state of emergency’ and invoke article 16 of the French Constitution, giving him the power to impose Martial Law, suspend parliament, and arrest his political opponents.
Article 16 of the Constitution provides the President of France with "exceptional powers" (Pouvoirs exceptionnels) in times of ‘acute crisis’. The Act of 3 April 1955 allows the president to declare a "state of emergency" and gives Macron the power to suspend parliament, impose Martial Law, and imprison his opponents. Article 36 of the same constitution regulates "state of siege" (état de siège) further bolsters these powers.
These Emergency Powers are the same ones Macron used in March 2020 to impose lockdowns and vaccine mandates. The Act of 23 March 2020 allows the declaration of a "sanitary state of emergency", which allowed the Prime Minister of France to take unprecedented measures under the guise of ‘protecting the public health’.
Proclaiming the state of emergency gives exceptional powers to the Minister of the Interior and to prefects. The Minister can pronounce house arrests. The prefects can regulate or forbid circulation and gathering in some areas: the power of curfew, which mayors can pronounce for the territory of their city independently of the state of emergency, is extended to prefects.
The Minister and the prefects can, for the part of the territory concerned by the state of emergency, order places of gathering to be closed. Authorities can also order that legally-detained weapons be relinquished to them. There is no need for the administration to motivate its decisions: house arrests or decisions forbidding someone to enter a defined area can be appealed.
All of those powers are not enacted by the simple proclamation of the state of emergency but may be decided by the authorities if the need arises.
If the decree, or later, the law, says so, the authorities can:
conduct administrative searches and seizures, day and night, without judiciary oversight,
censor the press, radio, films, and theater representations.
During the 2005 civil unrest in France, President Jacques Chirac declared a state of emergency on 8 November 2005. It was extended for three months on 16 November by Parliament, which was dominated by the UMP majority. On 10 December 2005 France's highest administrative body, the Council of State, ruled that the three-month state of emergency decreed to guarantee calm following the unrest was legal. It rejected a complaint from 74 law professors and the Green party challenging the necessity of the state of emergency and stating that it compromised fundamental liberties. In its rejection the council of state declared that the conditions that led to the unrest (which began on 27 October), the rapid spread of violence, and the possibility that it could recur justified the state of emergency.
Emergency Powers are nothing new for Macron, they were used to usher him into office, deployed again in 2020 to impose lockdowns and vaccines, and in May of this year 2024 they were used to quash dissent in New Caledonia following protests against his government.
Rioting has reportedly already begun as Antifa, and other Communist groups reportedly protest at Le Pen’s win, these incidents will be bolstered by a number of ‘false flag’ events blamed on the ‘far-right’ according to French intelligence analysts. Far Left and Far Right groups fighting will be just the excuse Macron needs to invoke those emergency powers and take back control of France.
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