France’s political forces were expected to make a last-ditch effort on Friday to win votes in crucial parliamentary elections, which could see the far-right take control of the government in a historic first.
The official campaign period ends at midnight, followed by a holiday on Saturday, during which political activity is prohibited prior to voting on Sunday. Another week of campaigning then leads to the decisive second round on July 7.
The far-right party Rassemblement National (RN) is expected to win the elections. This may give the party the post of prime minister for the first time in its history, in a tense ‘cohabitation’ with centrist President Emmanuel Macron.
Opinion polls put his centrist alliance in third place, behind the RN and a broad but fragile left-wing coalition, the New Popular Front (NFP).
The leader of the RN party, Jordan Bardella28, would get the chance to lead a government as prime minister.
But he has insisted he would only do so if his party won an absolute majority of the 577 seats in the National Assembly after the second round.
Both friends and enemies of Macron are still puzzled over why the president dissolved the House of Representatives and called new elections after his party suffered a heavy defeat in this month’s European Parliament elections.
– ‘Serious message’ –
The RN’s three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen had heightened tensions in the run-up to the election by telling regional daily Telegramme that the president’s title as commander in chief of the armed forces was “honorable, because it is the prime minister who calls the shots”.
In a television debate late Thursday, Prime Minister said Gabriel Attal said Le Pen had sent a “clear message” by indicating that if the RN wins the election “there will be some kind of dispute between the prime minister and the president about who is the commander in chief of the army”.
“It is a very serious message for the security of France,” he said.
But Bardella said in the debate that he “would not allow Russian imperialism to swallow up an allied state like Ukraine.”
He also said he was against sending longer-range missiles to Ukraine, which could hit Russian territory “and put France and the French in a situation of joint warfare.”
“My compass is the interest of France and the French,” Bardella said.
Macron has insisted he will serve out the remainder of his second term, until it expires in 2027, regardless of which party emerges victorious in the upcoming legislative battle.
Le Pen, who has long been accused by opponents of having too intimate a relationship with the Kremlin, believes this is her best chance yet to win the Élysée after three previous attempts.
– ‘Real fear’ –
When he called early elections after the RN lost the European Parliament elections on June 9, Macron hoped to present voters with a stark choice: should they hand France over to the far right?
An Ipsos poll published in Le Monde predicted the RN would win 36 percent of the vote, the NFP 29 percent and Macron’s alliance just 19.5 percent.
“Not only can the RN imagine a relative majority, but we cannot rule out an absolute majority,” Brice Teinturier, deputy director of Ipsos, told AFP.
The televised debate, in which Attal and Bardella were joined by Socialist leader Olivier Faure, was as bad-tempered as the first session on Tuesday.
“Every time you’re in trouble, you change the subject,” Attal told Bardella. “He’s tense tonight, is Mr. Attal,” Bardella said.
Attal charged that a hundred RN candidates running in the elections had made “racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic comments.”
“Everything is untrue, completely untrue,” responded Bardella, who also defended a controversial proposal to exclude people with dual nationality from sensitive state positions.
French basketball superstar Victor Wembanyama highlighted the interests felt by many people from ethnic minority backgrounds in France, saying: “For me it is important to move away from extremes because that is not the direction we should go in a country like ours to go”.
Acclaimed black French filmmaker Alice Diop, meanwhile, told the Liberation newspaper that having the far right in the government would be “not only a moral inconvenience, but also a real fear.”
pab-tgb-sjw/yad
