France yesterday began voting in the final round of parliamentary elections, with centrist French President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition looking to hold off a challenge from a newly formed left-wing alliance.
Forecasters predicted a rerun of last week’s low turnout at polling stations, which opened at 8am and were to close at 8pm.
The vote would be decisive for Macron’s second-term agenda following his re-election in April, with the 44-year-old needing a majority to push through promised tax cuts and welfare reform, and raise the retirement age.
Photo: AP
Projections from polling firms suggested his “Together” coalition was on course to be the biggest party in the next National Assembly, but possibly short of the 289 seats needed for a majority.
New left-wing coalition NUPES was hoping to spring a surprise, with the red-green collective promising to block Macron’s agenda after uniting behind 70-year-old figurehead Jean-Luc Melenchon.
“The vote is extremely open and it would be improper to say that things are settled one way or the other,” Melenchon told reporters on Friday during a final campaign stop in Paris.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen was also eyeing major gains for her National Rally party, which had just eight seats in the outgoing parliament.
Macron was left disappointed by results last weekend after a first round of voting saw Together and NUPES finish neck-and-neck on about 26 percent.
Surging inflation, lackluster campaigning from newly named French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, and Macron’s abrasive personality were all seen as reasons for the under-performance.
“I really don’t believe we’ll get an overall majority,” one minister told reporters last week.
The first-round vote served to whittle down candidates in most of the country’s 577 constituencies to two finalists who went head-to-head yesterday. The election caps an intense two-month sequence to elect a new president and parliament, with voter fatigue seen as one of the reasons for what is expected to be record-low turnout yesterday.
The contest between Together and NUPES has turned increasingly bitter over the past week, with Macron’s allies seeking to paint their main opponents as dangerous far-leftists.
Senior lawmaker Christophe Castaner has accused Melenchon of wanting a “Soviet revolution,” while French Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire called him a “French Chavez” in reference to the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
Macron headed to Ukraine last week, hoping to remind voters of his foreign policy credentials and one of Melenchon’s perceived weaknesses — his anti-NATO and anti-EU views at a time of war in Europe.
“We need a solid majority to ensure order outside and inside our borders. Nothing would be worse than adding French disorder to global disorder,” Macron said.
As president, he would retain control of foreign and defense policy whatever the outcome, but his domestic agenda could be thwarted.
Melenchon has promised a break from “30 years of neoliberalism,” and has pledged minimum wage and public spending hikes, as well as nationalizations.
It has been 20 years since France last had a president and prime minister from different parties, when right-winger then-president Jacques Chirac had to work with a Socialist-dominated parliament under then-prime minister Lionel Jospin.
A final flurry of polls on Friday suggested Macron’s Together allies were on track for 255 to 305 seats yesterday, with only the upper end of that range being a majority of more than 289.
NUPES would secure about 140 to 200 seats, making them the biggest opposition force, while Le Pen’s National Rally was seen to get about 20 to 45 seats.
If they secure more than 15 seats, Le Pen’s lawmakers would be able to form a formal group in parliament, giving them greater visibility and resources.
However, after scoring 41.5 percent in the presidential election in April, Le Pen is still struggling to convert her huge national following into major representation in parliament.
“You can put an end to five years of toxic policies by Emmanuel Macron,” she said in a campaign video posted on social media on Friday. “You also have the chance to protect the country from the far left.”
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS