France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party looked set to fall short of an absolute majority in parliamentary elections, recent polls showed on the last day of campaigning yesterday, although some politicians and pollsters urged caution.
An OpinionWay poll for business daily Les Echos saw the RN winning 205-230 seats in tomorrow’s vote, ahead of the left-wing New Popular Front with 145-175 seats, and French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc with 130-162 seats. The findings were largely in line with other surveys released on Thursday.
For a ruling majority, 289 seats are needed in the National Assembly.
Photo: AFP
European lawmaker Raphael Glucksmann, one of the political leaders of the leftist New Popular Front (NPF), told RTL radio one should not take for granted the RN falling short of an absolute majority.
“Commentators and politicians already speak as if the RN had no absolute majority and congratulate themselves on their efforts to block it... I think that could demobilize voters and I am worried. There is a tidal wave in favor of the National Rally,” he said.
More than 200 candidates across the political spectrum withdrew their candidacies to clear the path for whoever was best placed to defeat the RN candidate in their district, a process known as the “republican front.”
However, much uncertainty remains, including whether voters would go along with these efforts to block the RN.
Leading RN figure Marine Le Pen told BFM TV that she still believed her party could score an absolute majority, despite most of the political landscape teaming up against her movement.
“I get the impression that all this is designed to demotivate our voters. Fortunately, I know them and I know they’re highly motivated, so I really do say go and vote,” Le Pen said, adding: “I think we have a serious chance of having an absolute majority in the National Assembly.”
IFOP pollster Jerome Fourquet, who on Thursday forecast 210-240 seats for the far right and 170-200 for the left, told RMC radio one could not even rule out the left-wing alliance outpacing the RN in the end.
“The big unknown is the size of the republican front... Will a left-wing voter cast a ballot for a right-wing candidate or a Macron camp candidate?” Fourquest said.
At least 51 candidates and their supporters were physically harmed at the end of a tense four weeks since Macron dissolved the National Assembly, French Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin said.
“Outbreaks of violence are to be feared on Sunday,” he told BFM TV, saying he decided to step up the police presence and ban a planned far-left demonstration at the National Assembly on the voting day.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS