French elections: Macron loses majority as French vote fragments

JUNE 20: He had called on voters to deliver a solid majority. But his centrist coalition lost dozens of seats in an election that has left French politics fragmented. The prime minister he had only recently appointed, Elisabeth Borne, said the situation was unprecedented. A storm hit Paris as she returned to her Matignon residence from a long meeting at the presidential Élysée palace to say that modern France had never seen a National Assembly like this one. "This situation represents a risk for our country, given the risks we're facing nationally and internationally," she said. "We will work as of tomorrow to build a working majority." That seems a stretch when the two other biggest groups in the Assembly are not remotely interested in collaboration. Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire was adamant that France was not ungovernable, but said it was going to require a lot of imagination. Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon was enjoying his success in bringing together mainstream parties from the left with Communists and Greens into an alliance called Nupes. He told supporters that the presidential party had suffered a total rout and every possibility was now in their hands. Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Rally party were also in jubilant mood after turning eight seats into 89. The people had spoken, she said: Emmanuel's Macron's adventure was over and he had been consigned to a minority government. If the prime minister was looking to the right-wing Republicans to help build a working majority, their message was not immediately encouraging. Party chairman Christian Jacob said the result was a "stinging failure" for a president now paying for cynically weaponising France's extremes. He's not Jupiter any more, said Dominique Rousseau, professor of constitutional law, referring to an earlier nickname ridiculing Mr Macron's supposed desire for power. "For Mr Macron these five years will be all about negotiations and parliamentary compromise," he told AFP. It was all so different in April, when he defeated Marine Le Pen convincingly and won a second term as president. He had more than 300 seats, but to maintain his outright majority he needed 289 - and fell well short with 245. More than half of voters abstained, with a turnout of 46.23%. Among the ministers to lose their seats was Health Minister Brigitte Bourguignon, who lost to her far-right opponent by just 56 votes. Green Transition Minister Amélie de Montchalin was also defeated, but another key figure, Europe Minister Clément Beaune, survived despite losing in the first round. One of Mr Macron's closest allies, the president of the Assembly Richard Ferrand, conceded victory to his Nupes rival Mélanie Thomin. Another casualty came on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, where a secretary of state, Justine Benin, lost her seat.In a rousing speech to his supporters, Mr Mélenchon said the result marked the moral failure of "Macronie", accusing the ruling party of enabling the far right by refusing to give clear guidance in seats where the left was running head to head with Marine Le Pen's party. In a tacit admission that he was unlikely to achieve his ambition of prime minister, the far-left leader said he was now changing his role in battle: "My commitment is and will remain at the front of your ranks until my final breath if you want." But as he was not running for a seat, he will not feature in the National Assembly. Five years ago, Emmanuel Macron harnessed a wave of optimism, bringing in a fresh cohort of MPs from civil society. The new faces this time have emerged from Nupes and the National Rally. Among the MPs elected for Nupes, which stands for New Ecological and Social Popular Union, is a hotel chambermaid who led her colleagues in a fight for better pay and conditions. Rachel Keke had vowed to dance in the Assembly if she succeeded in defeating a former sports minister. Which reforms are at risk? President Macron has promised to tackle the cost of living crisis, but his rivals have very different ideas on how to go about it. His big-ticket proposals were reforming benefits, cutting taxes and raising the retirement age gradually from 62 to 65. His pension age reform will be particularly hard to get through, although he will attract support from the Republicans. Then there are proposals to move towards carbon neutrality and full employment. And he recently offered a "new method" of governing with greater involvement from civil society, proposing a National Council for Refoundation made up of local people to make France more democratic.

पूर्ण विवरण

सम्बन्धित सामग्री

French elections: Macron and Le Pen to fight for presidency

APRIL 11: "Make no mistake, nothing is decided," he told cheering supporters. In the end, he won a convincing first-round victory, but opinion polls suggest the run-off could be much closer. Ms Le Pen called on every non-Macron voter to join her and "put France back in order". With 97% of results counted, Emmanuel Macron had 27.35% of the vote, Marine Le Pen 23.97% and Jean-Luc Mélenchon 21.7%. Kingmaker on far left Veteran far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon polled even better than five years ago and now has the unlikely role of kingmaker. "You must not give a single vote to Marine Le Pen," he warned his supporters, but unlike other candidates, he pointedly did not back the president instead. Later in the evening, Mélenchon activists gathered outside his campaign HQ thinking he might even come second, but it was not to be. Making up more than a fifth of the vote, Mélenchon voters could decide the final round of this election, yet many of them may just sit the second round out and abstain. Twelve candidates were in the running, but these were the only three who polled more than 10%. Many voters appeared to embrace the idea of tactical or "useful" voting, deciding that the other nine candidates had no hope of making the run-off. Several of the nine had little chance anyway, but the 2022 presidential election will be partly remembered for the disaster that befell the two old parties that used to run France, the Republicans and Socialists. They sank almost without trace, with Socialist Anne Hidalgo falling below 2%. It was only a few months ago that Valérie Pécresse was still in the race for the right-wing Republicans. She performed so badly, her party could not even scrape the 5% needed to claim its election costs. This is potentially terrible news for a party already tearing itself apart. Parties that fail to reach 5% only get €800,000 (£670,000) of their campaign funding covered by the state, and the Republicans will have paid out far more than that. Run-off campaign starts now The battle for votes now starts in earnest. Marine Le Pen can count on supporters of Eric Zemmour, whose more hardline nationalism gave him fourth place and 7%. Nationalist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan has also backed her. That is already an impressive 33% of the entire vote. Mr Macron's team is already planning a series of big rallies and major TV appearances. Most of the other candidates on the left have backed him, as has Valérie Pécresse, but one-time Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal said the president now had to "earn" victory. Ifop pollster François Dabi said his company's 51%-49% estimate was the closest they had ever predicted. A BFMTV poll put the gap at 52%-48% and an Ipsos poll suggested it was wider still. Addressing his supporters, Mr Macron looked a relieved man and he promised to work harder than in the first part of the campaign. He only started campaigning eight days before, his mind more focused on Russia's war in Ukraine. "When the extreme right in all its forms represents so much of our country," he said, "we cannot feel that things are going well." He addressed Le Pen voters too: "I want to convince them in the next few days that our project answers solidly to their fears and challenges of our time." Ms Le Pen said it was time for a "great changeover", with a fundamental choice on 24 April of two opposite views: "Either division and disorder, or a union of the French people around guaranteed social justice." She has built her campaign around the cost-of-living crunch facing much of Europe, promising to cut taxes and waive income tax for under-30s. There has been less emphasis on nationalism, but she wants a referendum on restricting immigration, radical change to the EU and a ban on the Islamic hijab in public areas. The campaign only sparked into life in the final fortnight, first because of the Covid pandemic and then the Russian war. But in the end, the spring sunshine meant turnout was not as low as feared, at almost 75%. It was already clear from Mr Macron's speech that he planned to target Ms Le Pen's close links with the Kremlin. Although she has condemned Vladimir Putin's war, she visited him before the previous election and her party took out a Russian loan. He wanted a France that made alliances with great democracies to defend itself, he said, not a state that would leave Europe and have only populists and xenophobes for allies. One in four young voters backed the president, although more than one in three 18-24 year-olds opted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, according to Elabe pollsters. Marine Le Pen performed best among 35-64 year-olds, while the president was favoured by over-65s.

Ratopati English फाल्गुन २०७८