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Elections Leave France in Chaos
The French Parliamentary second round elections on July 7 have delivered unexpected results with the left’s New Popular Front winning a relative majority with 172-192 of the 577 seats, followed by Macron’s Presidential Majority with 150-170 seats and National Rally with 132-152 seats. Since no party garnered an absolute majority, the future of France’s political leadership remains undecided.
His fear of losing ground to the far right led to his inadvertently ceding power to the far left.
The prime minister Gabriel Atal who has only been in place since January has already announced his resignation. The results have also triggered a drop in the Euro sparking alarms within the global financial markets.
Macron has now become the proverbial lame duck as France potentially moves towards political cohabitation and a government by coalition. The last situation involving cohabitation took place from 1997-2002 when the conservative president Jacques Chirac governed France with the socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin.
As of this writing, there are no firm indicators about how the current electoral impasse will be resolved. There also have been no formal announcements about the selection of the next prime minister. (READ MORE from Leonora Cravotta: Brats: A Deliberation on Labels and Fame)
The second round, which had a voter participation of 67 percent , the highest level since 1981, created a surprise plot twist from the first-round results where Marine Le Pen’s National Rally Party took 33.5 percent, New Popular Front 28 percent, and Macron’s Presidential Majority took 20.04 percent. The unexpected third-place finish for the National Rally is a minor setback for the iterative mainstreaming of Marine Le Pen’s party, It is also a rebuke of the far-right wave that has been swelling in the European Parliamentary Elections.
Political analysts have been proclaiming the death of Macronism for some time now. Macron’s waning popularity over the last year is due to a potpourri of unpopular executive actions and government policies. His bypassing of parliament to institute his pension reform program garnered blowback across the political spectrum. He was also criticized by the left for implementing a controversial immigration bill supported by the National Rally party that imposed entrance quotas and established a minimum French residency period of five years for social security benefits.
Macron had also lost ground even among his traditional bastions of support such as the “cadres,” the educated professional class. According to a recent survey about voting intentions only 25 percent of cadres said that they were voting for Macron, which is down from 33 percent in 2022 and 37 percent in 2017. By contrast, the number of cadres voting left has increased steadily from 25 percent in 2017, 28 percent in 2022 to 33 percent in 2024. The growth among those expressing a likelihood to vote for National Rally has grown exponentially from 10 percent in 2017 and 2022 to 24 percent in 2024.
France’s political future remains in flux as the bargaining begins. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the New Popular Front, delivered a speech shortly after the results were announced. The defeat of the president of the Republic and his coalition is clearly confirmed. The president must bow to this defeat and admit it without attempting to avoid it by any means whatsoever.” There are concerns about how Mélenchon’s France Unbowed Party will govern collaboratively with the other members of the New Popular Front which includes the Socialists and the Ecologists.
Gabriel Atal, who at 35 is the youngest prime minister in France’s history addressed the uncharted political situation that the country now faces. “I know that, in light of the results of this evening, many French people feel a certain uncertainty about the future, as no absolute majority has emerged [in parliament]. Our country is experiencing an unprecedented political situation,”
Jordan Bardella, the 28 year old president of National Rally who was expected to replace Atal as the prime minister if their party had won the second round also delivered remarks where he blamed Macron for the snap elections, claiming this action has led to an unstable political situation. “Tonight, these electoral arrangements have thrown France into Jean-Luc Melenchon’s extreme left.”
He also commented that the National Rally had gained significant ground with the first round and the ‘un-natural alliance” of the parties within the New Popular Front had deprived National Rally of a victory. However, the National Rally Party is not discouraged by third place finish as Marine Le Pen intends to once again run for president in 2027.
President Macron has been muted in his response to the elections with his office issuing a statement, “The president, as guarantor of our institutions, will respect the choice of French people.” (READ MORE: Anthony Esolen Exposes Modern Liberal Fallacies in The Lies of Our Time)
France is now in a situation with no true victors. This outcome would not have happened if Macron had not taken a political gamble by disssolving the National Assembly and running a snap election. This action only further ignited the current anti-establishment and anti-globalist sentiment that has laid seed in not only France but also the broader Western civilization. His fear of losing ground to the far right led to his inadvertently ceding power to the far left and in doing so, he has created yet another reason for political division and disorganization. Political chaos is the last thing France needs as it approaches the 2024 Olympic Games. One thing is certain all eyes are now on France but not for the reason its leadership originally intended.
The post Elections Leave France in Chaos appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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