PARIS (AP) — President Emmanuel Macron will address French voters Wednesday for the first time since calling for early national elections following his party’s crushing defeat by the far right in European elections.
Macron is expected to explain his shock decision to dissolve the National Assembly, France’s parliament. The decision has prompted early parliamentary elections, three weeks after Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party triumphed in elections over the Republican Party. Parliament of the European Union.
On Sunday, Macron said he had decided to vote early because he could not ignore the new political reality after his pro-European party suffered a cleansing defeat and received less than half the support of the National Rally with its star leader Jordan Bardella . .
Macron, who still has three years left in his second presidential term, hopes voters will unite to rein in the far-right in national elections in a way they failed to do in European elections.
But Sunday’s decision to dissolve parliament and send to the polls voters who have just expressed their dissatisfaction with Macron’s policies was a risky move that could lead to the French far-right leading a government for the first time since World War II.
Potential alliances and France’s two-round electoral system in national elections make the outcome of the vote highly uncertain.
Opposition parties on the left and right have been scrambling to build alliances and field candidates in early parliamentary elections scheduled for June 30 and July 7.
While sharp differences between parties remain on opposite sides of the political spectrum, prominent figures calling for a united front appear to have one thing in common: they do not want to work with Macron.
Despite their divisions, the left-wing parties agreed late Monday to form an alliance that includes the Greens, the Socialists, the Communists and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left France Unbowed.
National Rally leader Marine Le Pen is working to consolidate power on the right in efforts to translate European triumph into a national one and move closer to claiming power. The far-right party, with a history of racism and xenophobia, is expected to win the most French seats in the European Parliament, possibly even 30 of France’s 81.
