Referendums, in France, are supposed to embody the direct voice of the people. But in fact, they make the elites tremble. Why? Because they can produce a verdict that disturbs, that contradicts the interests of the dominant class.
Let us take an emblematic example: the referendum of 2005 on the treaty establishing a Constitution for the European Union. A majority of the French voted NO. Clear, clean, democratic. And yet… a few months later, the Treaty of Lisbon, taking up the essential of the rejected text, is adopted by parliamentary means.
This is not an error, it is a strategy. When the people say NO, one circumvents. One reformulates. One passes it through other channels. Because in this representative democracy, real power does not always reside in the ballot boxes, but in the networks of influence, the cabinets, the discreet alliances.
So yes, referendums frighten. Not because they are dangerous, but because they are authentic. They reveal a fracture between the popular aspirations and the trajectories imposed from above. And if one wants a living democracy, one will have to stop confiscating speech when it disturbs.
But faced with this democratic impasse, some advance a taboo idea: that of an assumed autocracy. Not a dictatorship disguised behind hollow institutions, but a strong, clear power, oriented towards profound reform. A regime capable of cutting to the quick, of going beyond particular interests, even if that offends the plebs, that mass which, by its choices, its inertias or its contradictions, participates in the bogging-down of the country.
This is not a call to tyranny, but to vertical responsibility, to a governance that dares to impose what consensus no longer dares to envisage. For sometimes, saving a ship in distress requires a captain who does not ask the crew's opinion at each wave, but who knows where he is going, and why he is going there.
And that is where the question becomes burning for me: Is the plebs in a capacity to decide everything for itself?
If each citizen were the holder of the knowledge, of the rigour, of the vision necessary to master the complex stakes of our era, would it have elected incapable leaders? Would it have validated, directly or indirectly, policies that have led to the deindustrialisation, to the loss of sovereignty, to the unbearable debt that we suffer today?
One cannot at the same time demand the absolute power of the people and refuse to assume its consequences. For democracy, without intellectual demand nor collective responsibility, becomes a mechanism of comfort, not a lever of transformation.
And when referendums are ignored in the name of the "protection of superior interests", one does not protect democracy: one neutralises it. One transforms it into theatre, where the vote becomes a set, and the result a detail.
That is why some defend the idea of a strong leader, of an enlightened dictator, and it must be recalled here that the word "dictator", in ancient Rome, had nothing pejorative about it. The dictator was named temporarily to resolve a crisis, with extended but framed powers. Cincinnatus, for example, remained in history as a model of virtue and efficiency. And beyond Rome, history is full of figures who, by their assumed authority, gave greatness and radiance to their nation:
- Nebuchadnezzar II, visionary builder, who made Babylon a centre of civilisation radiating at the heart of the ancient Middle East. • Ramesses II, strategist and emblematic sovereign, who marked Egypt with his monumental and diplomatic imprint. • Peter the Great, audacious reformer, who modernised Russia, reinforced its army and opened the country to Europe. • Louis XIV, absolute monarch, who consolidated the State, centralised power and asserted French might on the European scene. • Napoleon Bonaparte, political and military genius, who reformed the law, the administration, and exported the idea of the modern nation across Europe.
And more recently: • Lee Kuan Yew, enlightened leader of Singapore (1959–1990), who transformed a city-State without resources into a world economic and technological power. • Deng Xiaoping, pragmatic strategist of China (1978–1997), who opened the country to the market economy, initiated its industrial ascent, and laid the bases of its current might.
These figures did not govern by caprice, but by vision. And nothing prevents a strong leader from consulting his people by referendum, not to submit to it, but to sound out, orient, adjust. In this framework, the referendum would no longer be a trap for the elites, but a tool in the service of a power that is assumed, lucid, and responsible.
This is not a call to tyranny, but to vertical responsibility, to a governance that dares to impose what consensus no longer dares to envisage. Saving a ship in distress requires a captain who does not ask the crew's opinion at each wave!