April 23, 2024

Athens News

News in English from Greece

Elections in France: "cold shower for Macron"

The results of the parliamentary elections in France are called a defeat by the media and analysts. Although winning the vote, Macron’s ruling coalition “Together” has lost an absolute majority in the National Assembly.

It will be extremely difficult for the President of France without proper support – the coalition of leftist parties, which took second place, will, apparently, provide him with powerful resistance as the main opposition force.

The third place, according to the “historical” voting results for them, was taken by the ultra-right with Marine Le Pen and also go to parliament. French Prime Minister Elisabeth Born comments on the results of the elections:

“Never in the history of the Fifth Republic has the National Assembly known such a configuration. This situation represents a risk for our country, given the challenges that we have to face both at the national and international levels. From tomorrow, we will begin to work on creating an active the majority.”

And Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who united the largest left-wing parties in an opposition alliance and led it, directly calls the voting results devastating for the presidential movement and Macron’s policy:

“First of all, this is a complete failure for the macronists. A moral failure for people who constantly lectured everyone and said that they would be an obstacle to the far right, whose positions they themselves strengthened as a result.”

The latter is represented by the “National Association”, which has increased the number of seats in parliament tenfold – from 8 to over 80. Without a doubt, this is a success for the leader of the party Marine Le Pen, who aims to “make Emmanuel Macron a minority president in order to protect the country from the rule of one party and a president without proper control over the exercise of their power.”

Gaining at least 150 seats enabled the New People’s Ecological and Social Union (NUPES) movement to have a lot of weight in the French National Assembly, provided that the unity between its members is maintained. The French newspaper Sud Ouest writes about this on June 20.

The real disappointment of these elections was the low turnout – more than 53% of French voters did not come to the polling stations. On Monday, mainstream media editorials ran under headlines in the style of “Cold shower for Macron.” Voters, on the other hand, express ambiguous opinions, but they agree on one thing – it is difficult to govern the country in this situation.

Sabrina Belgot, restaurant worker, 30:

“It had to happen, because Macron was nice at first, but it only lasted five minutes. That’s why we are seeing the rise in popularity of the National Front, the Green Party, the Socialists, the Left. Because we have a real disaster here now, and it has been going on for five years and the situation is getting worse. People don’t have jobs, they care very little about people.”

Eric Duguet, consultant, 57:

“The president should apply the same rules to himself as to his ministers: that is, the president who loses must resign. I honestly think so. Because it’s not manageable anyway. What will he have to do? Either dissolve parliament, or try to negotiate left and right in order to get 289 deputy votes, or leave.”



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