India, Oct. 15 -- A day after French Prime Minister (PM) Sebastien Lecornu announced his cabinet on October 5, he had to tender his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron - thereby earning the dubious distinction of being the premier with the shortest period served in France's Fifth Republic. But, in a week that was bizarre even by French standards, Macron re-appointed Lecornu as PM on October 10 and tasked him with government formation and passing the national budget. It was Macron's act of folly in June last year - when he called for snap parliamentary elections - that led to a hung parliament with a three-way split between far-Right, Left/far-Left, and centrist parties. Since then, three PMs have come and gone in quick succession. The political reality is that Macron's centrist alliance does not enjoy majority support in the fractured French parliament. Macron does not have too many options at this stage. In a final act of desperation, Macron re-appointed Lecornu to try and achieve consensus among the warring parties, with a view to pass a budget. If this gambit fails, the only course of action will be for Macron to call another snap parliamentary election. The trouble is another parliamentary election is unlikely to resolve matters. In such a scenario, it is quite conceivable that the far-Right party of Marine Le Pen, National Rally, emerges as the single-largest party in the parliament and claims the premier's post. Macron will then have no alternative but to "co-habit" with a far-Right PM and accept that this will be the lasting legacy of his presidency. There have been calls for Macron to resign, but it is unlikely that he will heed these, at least for now. A joke doing the rounds in Europe is that France has become Italy and Italy has become France, referring to the contrast between the relative stability and prosperity enjoyed by Italy under Giorgia Meloni and the political uncertainty and economic turbulence experienced by France under Macron. France has enormously high public debt, an unsustainable fiscal deficit, and a sovereign rating that has been downgraded recently. So much so, France's overall rating is only ahead of Italy and Greece in the eurozone. Indeed, Moody's has described Italy's outlook as positive while describing France's outlook as negative. For most French people, nothing could be more insulting. Behind the politics of it all, lies the massive financial crisis that France confronts. Two substantive issues agitate the French mind at present. One, the issue of pension reform. In 2023, France passed a law to raise the retirement age to 64 years from 62 years, with the requirement that pensioners must have worked for at least 43 years. This was Macron's signature reform pushed through parliament without a vote. This has never really been accepted by the French public and is being opposed by the Left/far-Left parties which now have serious clout in the parliament. Left to themselves, they will repeal this law. The second issue is the so-called Zucman tax (named after French economist Gabriel Zucman) - a wealth tax of 2% on persons with more than 100 million euros. This has found favour with the French populace but not with the Right. The bottom line is this: France must either accept an austerity budget with public spending cuts or find ways to tax the ultra-rich. At present, there is no political consensus to do either of the two things. Lecornu has already ruled out the Zucman tax, so it is hard to see what else he can do to keep the public debt and fiscal deficit from ballooning, other than resort to spending cuts. The Fifth Republic which establishes the political ground rules of government in France may have also outlived its utility. It was conceived in 1958 when there was need for political stability, and gave the French president lot of power. The Fifth Republic did not quite anticipate a situation where a president could be legitimately elected for a period of five years, but their political formation did not necessarily dominate the French parliament. In the past, there were instances of "co-habitation" that worked, partly because presidents were larger than life and there was a spirit of compromise among French politicians. That political culture is long gone. It may be necessary to devise a Sixth Republic, with fresh rules of engagement for politicians and new definitions of the president's powers. Whether France is ready for such a thing is another matter. Amid all of this, one political party may gain the most. Unsurprisingly, it is Le Pen's National Rally. It is a matter of supreme irony that while all the political stars seem to suggest that Le Pen could conceivably win the presidential elections due in 2027, the legal hurdles she faces from corruption cases may prevent her from contesting the very elections that she wants to win. But then, her protege, Jordan Bardella, is well placed to inherit the mantle. The French certainly live in interesting times....