France yesterday voted in a parliamentary runoff election with the far-right National Rally (RN) bidding for power, but likely to fall short of a majority, raising the specter of a chaotic hung parliament.
A hung parliament would severely dent French President Emmanuel Macron’s authority and herald a prolonged period of instability and policy deadlock in the eurozone’s second biggest economy.
Should the nationalist, eurosceptic RN secure a majority, it would usher in France’s first far-right government since World War II and send shockwaves through the EU at a time populist parties are strengthening support across the continent.
Photo: Reuters
Voting closes at 6pm in towns and small cities and 8pm in bigger cities. Pollsters were expected to deliver initial projections based on early counts from a sample of voting stations at 8pm.
Opinion polls forecast Marine Le Pen’s RN would emerge the dominant force in the National Assembly as voters punish Macron over a cost of living crisis and being out of touch with the hardships people face.
However, the RN is seen failing to reach the 289-seat target that would outright hand Le Pen’s 28-year-old protege, RN president Jordan Bardella, the prime minister’s job with a working majority.
The far right’s projected margin of victory has narrowed since Macron’s centrist Together alliance and the left-wing New Popular Front pulled scores of candidates from three-way races in the second round in a bid to unify the anti-RN vote.
“France is on the cliff-edge and we don’t know if we’re going to jump,” Raphael Glucksmann, a member of the European Parliament who led France’s leftist ticket in last month’s European vote, told France Inter radio last week.
Political violence surged during the short three-week campaign.
French Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin has said authorities recorded more than 50 physical assaults on candidates and campaigners.
Some luxury boutiques along the Champs-Elysees boulevard, including the Louis Vuitton store, barricaded windows and Darmanin said he was deploying 30,000 police amid concerns of violent protests should the far right win.
A longtime pariah for many due to its history of racism and antisemitism, the RN has broadened its support beyond its traditional base along the Mediterranean coast and the deindustrialised north, tapping into voter anger at Macron over straitened household budgets, security, and immigration worries.
“French people have a real desire for change,” Le Pen told TF1 TV on Wednesday.
Macron stunned the country and angered many of his political allies and supporters when he called the snap election after a humbling by the RN in last month’s European parliamentary vote, hoping to wrong-foot his rivals in a legislative election.
Whatever the final result, his political agenda now appears dead, three years before the end of his presidency.
“Our country is going through a serious crisis, we are only a few hours away from a new order,” said engineer Pascal Cuzange who cast his vote for Macron’s alliance more in protest against the alternatives than in support for the president.
“There is a risk that the country becomes ungovernable,” he said.
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