France needed a “Jupiterian” president, saying that a “normal” person would be destabilising.

Before taking the reins as head of state, Emmanuel Macron suggested France needed a “Jupiterian” president, saying that a “normal” person would be destabilising.

The comparison of a democratically-elected position to the King of all Gods in Greek mythology may seem hypocritical in a country that violently overran its monarchy centuries ago.

Yet in the last 50 years, France’s constitution has evolved, with more power consolidated in the president.

“We have a president in France who presides over the Republic, who controls the government, who controls parliament, who controls the Constitutional Court. It makes a super president, like Jupiter, as we call Macron,” said Christophe Chabrot, a senior lecturer in public law at the Lumiere University Lyon 2.

“It’s a little bit as if we returned to 1830 when in European monarchies the king was beginning to lose his powers to the prime minister but still retained a lot of power,” Chabrot added.

Critics say France’s parliament is becoming a rubber stamp that approves the president’s bidding, with some politicians calling for a new constitution that brings more balance to the institutions.

“The President of the Republic in France has by law, much more power than any other president in Europe,” said Delphine Dulong, a political science professor at the University of Paris I, Pantheon Sorbonne.

“And in practice, successive presidents have also made very broad, very extensive use of their constitutional rights.”

The beginnings of France’s Fifth Republic

France’s current constitution dates back to 1958 when renowned General Charles de Gaulle formed a new republic following an uprising in Algeria.

President René Coty said France was on the verge of civil war amid the riots and that he would designate the “most illustrious of the French…who, in the darkest years of our history, was our leader” to lead the government.

Later that year, de Gaulle was elected by politicians as the first president of the new Fifth Republic.

The previous republic dated back to the end of World War II and gave more power to the parliament, creating instability and competition between political parties, experts say.