Jordan Bardella has already made it known that he would refuse the post of Prime Minister if he did not have an absolute majority, i.e. 289 deputies.
AFP
After more than 165 withdrawals have already been announced, the starting line for the second round of the legislative elections will be known on Tuesday at 6:00 p.m., and should, year in and year out, confirm the formation of a “republican front” against the National Rally. Enthusiasm is certainly not there, but withdrawals of Macronist or left-wing candidates are taking place in most constituencies where at least three candidates were qualified and where the Le Pen party is in a position to win. The whole question is to know in what proportion voters will switch to this republican front.
The goal is to prevent the RN from obtaining an absolute majority of 289 deputies on Sunday evening in the second round. If it were achieved, the opponents of the far-right party would then face the highly complex task of forming a majority or an alternative government capable of leading France.
A moral authority on the left, the former general secretary of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, warned on Monday, in an interview with AFP, against any “hitch in the Republican withdrawal”. For his part, Jordan Bardella, president of the RN and ready to enter Matignon, denounced “alliances of dishonor” to block him, and called on voters to grant him an absolute majority “in the face of the existential threat to the French nation” that, according to him, the left-wing alliance New Popular Front represents.
Clear photography
Candidates for the parliamentary seat have until 6:00 p.m. to submit their application to the prefecture. This is when a clear picture will emerge. But at this stage, according to AFP’s findings, more than 165 candidates have withdrawn from more than 300 three-way races initially planned for the first round.
Among these, for the moment, there are a majority of representatives of the NFP but also three ministers (Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, Marie Guévenoux, Fadila Khattabi).
The LFI candidate withdrew in Calvados to favour the election against the RN of former Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, which the left had nevertheless vigorously fought on pension and immigration reforms or on the use of article 49.3 on the budget. The same approach was taken in Tourcoing, where the candidate invested by the NFP withdrew so as not to take the risk of seeing the RN beat the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin.
Left-wing leaders have expressed their dissatisfaction with the hesitations or reluctance of some in the presidential camp. “We have applied a clear rule (…): not one vote for the National Rally, not one more seat for the National Rally. And we really hope that the Macronist camp will show the same clarity,” declared the coordinator of the Insoumis, Manuel Bompard, on Monday.
“Not a single vote” for the RN
Emmanuel Macron told his ministers that “not a single vote” should “go to the far right”, recalling that the left had mobilized against the RN in 2017 and in 2022, allowing its own accession to the Élysée. A way of responding to those who, in its majority, put the RN and La France Insoumise back to back, accused of having flirted with anti-Semitism during the European campaign. First and foremost the Minister of Finance, Bruno Le Maire, and the former Prime Minister, Édouard Philippe. The presidential statement also serves as a warning to the candidates of his own party, Renaissance, who would be reluctant to leave the field open to a left-wing candidate better placed against the RN.
On Sunday, the navy blue wave broke with more than 10.6 million votes, or 33.1% of the vote, a historic level – excluding the second round of the 2022 presidential election. In the first round on Sunday, the RN elected 39 deputies, starting with Marine Le Pen in Pas-de-Calais. The party with the flame, allied with Eric Ciotti, qualified in 443 of the 577 constituencies and is in the lead in 296 of them.
For the first time since World War II, the far right could govern France. And few options are available to other political forces to prevent it. Jordan Bardella has already made it known that he would refuse the post of Prime Minister if he did not have an absolute majority, or 289 deputies. But, if the RN comes close, with “for example 270 deputies”, Marine Le Pen indicated on Tuesday that the RN would seek to attract “a certain number of deputies, deputies for example various right, various left, LR, who have expressed in the past a proximity to us”.
If the RN could not govern, the Macronists, the left and the right-wing party Les Républicains (LR) would probably be forced to innovate by trying to form a “grand coalition”, common in European countries but foreign to French political traditions. Gabriel Attal thus hoped that a “plural assembly” would emerge from the ballot boxes, while the LR president of Hauts-de-France, Xavier Bertrand, pleaded for a “government of national revival”.
On France Info, François Bayrou assured that such a transpartisan government was “conceivable”, because “many of those who yesterday were fiercely in the opposition are thinking about it”. But Manuel Bompard ruled out that LFI would participate in such a coalition. “The Insoumis will only govern to implement their program, nothing but the program but the whole program”, he declared on BFMTV/RMC.
(afp)
