France votes in a decisive parliamentary election for Emmanuel Macron

The French voted this Sunday in the first round of legislative elections that must decide whether the centrist president Emmanuel Macronre-elected six weeks ago, will have a new parliamentary majority to apply his program.

Polling stations opened at 0800 (0600 GMT) in France metropolitan for most of the 48 million voters, who already began to vote the day before in a large part of the overseas territories.

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For the first time in 25 years, the main parties of the left — environmentalists, communists, socialists and France Insumisa (radical left) — decided to concur in a united front, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

The 70-year-old political veteran, who was left at the gates of the presidential ballot with almost 22% of the vote, seeks his revenge in this “third round”, and prevent Macron from applying his liberal program.

For the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes), led by Mélenchon, the French re-elected the centrist on April 24 not for his program, but to prevent his rival, the far-right Marine Le Pen, from coming to power.

The polls tie the centrist alliance Together! and to the front of the left in the first round, and the victory for the ruling party in the second round of June 19, but without an absolute majority – only relative – for Macron.

Abstention is announced as key, especially for the radical left and the extreme right, whose voters are more likely not to go to the polls.

At 5:00 p.m. (3:00 p.m. GMT) the participation was 39.42%, a figure lower than that of the 2017 legislative elections (40.75% at the same time), which ended with a historical low since 1958, with 48, 7%.

In the town of Saint-Sulpice-la-Forêt (west), Arnaud Davy, 61, notes that there is “less interest than for the presidential election” that was held in April. “People talk less” about these legislative ones, he adds.

577 seats up for grabs

Faced with the rise of Nupes and the possibility of losing the absolute majority, the 44-year-old French president went down to the electoral mud in the final stretch of the campaign to ask for a “strong and clear majority” against the “extremes.”

Macron is risking being able to apply his program, whose cost was estimated in April at 50,000 million euros per year (about 52,600 million dollars) and which includes delaying retirement from 62 to 65 years or the “renaissance” of nuclear energy.

The French electoral system makes it difficult to make clear projections of the results. Voters must choose the deputy from their constituency –577 in total–, through a two-round uninominal system.

After the ballot on June 19, it will be known if the French give their total trust to Macron and more than 289 deputies (absolute majority), if they force him to negotiate with a relative majority or if they impose a “cohabitation” on him.

In the last scenario, “he would no longer set the nation’s policy, but the majority of the Assembly and the prime minister who comes out of it,” explains Dominique Rousseau, professor of Constitutional Law at the Panthéon-Sorbonne university.

France it has already known mandates with a government and a president of a different political persuasion. The last cohabitation was from 1997 to 2002, when conservative President Jacques Chirac appointed the socialist Lionel Jospin as prime minister.

Like Jospin, who led the Plural Left alliance in the 1997 legislative elections, Mélenchon hopes to become head of government. The idea of ​​seeing the “Gallic Chávez”, in the words of the Economy Minister, in power worries the ruling party.

Unlike the presidential election, the far right — divided — does not arrive in a position of strength, beyond its fiefdoms in the north and southeast, and the traditional right-wing party, the Republicans, is risking its future after the April debacle.

Although purchasing power, in a context of rising prices due to the war in Ukraine, is the main concern, the campaign was marked by several controversies over the actions of the police, such as at the Stade de France.

The polling stations will close at 4:00 p.m. GMT), except in large cities such as Paris, where they will remain open until 6:00 p.m. GMT, when the first estimates from the polling institutes are expected.

Source: Elcomercio

Ronald Payne

I, Ronald Payne, am a journalist and author who dedicated his life to telling the stories that need to be said. I have over 7 years of experience as a reporter and editor, covering everything from politics to business to crime.