French President Emmanuel Macron has allied with the French far-left in the country's ongoing snap legislative election to prevent M...
French President Emmanuel Macron has allied with the French far-left in the country's ongoing snap legislative election to prevent Marine Le Pen's conservative National Rally from securing a majority in parliament.
National Rally, which ran on a conservative anti-illegal immigration platform, secured 33.2 percent of the vote during the first round of voting.
The party garnered more votes than Macron's centrist and liberal Ensemble coalition and the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition, which garnered 21.28 percent and 28.21 percent of first round votes, respectively.
National Rally and its allies won 38 of 577 seats in the first round, and advanced to the second round in 485 of the remaining 501 seats under contention.
In more than half of the districts, three candidates advanced to the run-off, with the possibility of the third-placed candidate withdrawing to help a mainstream party defeat the National Rally.
The National Rally's success put it within reach of winning the 289 seats needed to form a majority in the National Assembly, which would position party president Jordan Bardella to become the Prime Minister and enable the party to pass legislation without opposition.
"I believe the National Rally can win the election Sunday [July 7] with an absolute majority," Bardella told news channel BFM TV. "I plan on putting together a government of national unity, based on this absolute majority, to carry out the recovery project that I presented to the country."
To counter this, Macron and Ensemble have set aside their differences with the far-left NFP and called for a broad electoral alliance to block Le Pen from winning a majority in the National Assembly.
Jean-Luc Melenchon of the La France Insoumise party, the largest party within the NFP, urged NFP candidates who qualified for the second round of voting but placed third to withdraw from the race to improve the chances of other candidates of defeating National Rally candidates. Meanwhile, Macron has urged candidates in Ensemble to similarly pull out candidates who placed third to support those who "uphold republican values" which, while not a direct endorsement of the NFP, has been interpreted as a signal for Ensemble supporters to vote against National Rally candidates.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal of Macron's liberal centrist Renaissance party justified the decision to withdraw third place candidates as a "moral duty" to prevent the National Rally from gaining power.
"The lesson of today is that the far right is at the gates of power," Attal said in the aftermath of the first round of voting. "Our objective is clear: To prevent the Rassemblement National [National Rally] from having an absolute majority in the second round, from dominating the Assemblee Nationale [National Assembly] and therefore from governing the country with the disastrous project it has in mind."
French ministers criticize Macron for collaborating with the far-left
This decision comes despite Macron's previous strong stance against collaborating with the "extremist" and "dangerous" far-left. Furthermore, the decision to appease the far-left rather than strategizing to garner more popular support has faced criticism from high level members of his cabinet.
"He is so drunk on himself that he is in a bubble. In every moment, he sincerely believes, even today, that he does the best thing that can possibly be done and says the best thing that can possibly be said," one minister said.
"It was a completely surreal scene. It was as if he hasn't understood that he's lost, hasn't understood that because of him his political movement is dead, hasn't understood that now he inspires only rage in those who once supported him, hasn't understood that his words now ring hollow, hasn’t understood that he has lost all his political capital," another minister stated.
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