France suffers from many things, and one of them is colonial disease.

While other colonial empires pulled back, France kept exploiting theirs. Even today.

As a result of doing it decade after decade, France became destination for people from their squeezed out countries.

Now if they let people do referendum, im afraid majority could decide about termination of some long term practices of government. Like CFA, or administering any overseas territory, with such problems in administering their own country.