Since his impulsive decision to dissolve parliament in 2024, which led him to lose his relative majority, Emmanuel Macron has been an impotent president. Far from being a new Charles de Gaulle, he is more like those presidents of previous regimes whose only role, as Georges Clemenceau once quipped, was to open flower shows. Or in the case of Macron, to “Panthéonise”.
The Panthéon, an imposing domed building in the Latin Quarter of Paris, was a church before the Revolution turned it into a burial place for heroes of the Republic. That tradition was resumed when Victor Hugo was buried at the Panthéon in 1885. Émile Zola’s ashes were transferred there in 1908. De Gaulle had the remains of the Resistance hero Jean Moulin moved there in 1964.
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