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2022 FRENCH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Emmanuel Macron’s French presidential rivals scrap for survival

French President Emmanuel Macron's political rivals have tried to turn up the heat this weekend with a series of rallies. But is it too late for them?

Presidential candidates are vying for the keys to the Elysée Palace.
Presidential candidates are vying for the keys to the Elysée Palace. Most polls indicate Macron will end up staying there for another five years. (Photo by Eric Feferberg / AFP)

Candidates in France’s looming presidential election pushed at the weekend to make themselves heard over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with a re-run of 2017’s final showdown still the most likely outcome.

Buoyed in part by his shuttle diplomacy ahead of the conflict and toughness on Moscow since the tanks began to roll, liberal incumbent Emmanuel Macron is riding high in the polls with two weeks to go.

But as the president “is totally absorbed by the international crisis, it’s very difficult to be present and to campaign”, a source close to him told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Short of a major upset, his opponent in the runoff will be far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen — exactly the same setup as five years ago.

A trio of candidates — far-right rival Eric Zemmour, conservative Valerie Pecresse and left-winger Jean-Luc Melenchon — still hope they can break out from the pack and take on Macron in the second round.

“Everything could be decided in the two weeks to come, they could count double,” Adelaide Zulfikarpasic of the BVA Opinion polling group told AFP.

“Four out of ten voters who say they are certain to cast their ballot are still undecided” on a candidate, she said.

Brawl on the right

On Sunday, Zemmour hopes to rally up to 50,000 people a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, bussing in supporters from other parts of France.

“This will be the event of the campaign, the biggest gathering,” the candidate told Sud Radio on Friday, insisting that “since the beginning, my meetings have touched off the greatest excitement.”

Yet Zemmour, a former columnist and TV commentator, has fallen below the 10 percent mark in some polls.

That is far short of support ranging around 20 percent for Le Pen and close to 30 percent for Macron.

The National Rally leader strove to project serenity as members of her own camp — including her niece Marion Marechal — deserted her for tougher-talking Zemmour.

Instead Le Pen has pounded the pavements campaigning on French streets and market squares, and this week urged potential Zemmour voters to back her if she reaches the second round as forecast.

“No one owns their voters,” she told M6 television, adding that “I hope if I’m in the second round they’ll join us.”

With Zemmour and Le Pen slogging it out for the hard-right vote and Macron sounding pro-business and law and-order notes, conservative Valerie Pecresse has struggled to make herself heard.

Her woes deepened Thursday when she announced that a positive Covid-19 test would keep her from planned campaign stops in western France and the southeast.

Divided left

Also Sunday, the leading left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon — polling at 12 to 15 percent — was rallying supporters in the Mediterranean port city Marseille.

Former banker Macron’s presidency has been dogged by left-wing resistance, including on law and order and economic issues, peaking with the “Yellow Vests” demonstrations in 2018 and 19.

But a political left divided among a slew of competing candidacies has yet to make a real mark on this year’s election.

“Don’t hide behind the differences between the leaders, you’re the ones who will make the decision, don’t shirk it,” Melenchon said at a Paris meeting a week before.

His hopes of making the second round could be thwarted by others still hoping for a miracle, including Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo — polling around just two percent for the once-mighty Socialist Party — Communist candidate Fabien Roussel and Greens boss Yannick Jadot.

The woes of Pecresse and Hidalgo, candidates of the traditional bastions of left and right that dominated the political scene just a few years ago, illustrate the longer-term factors beyond the Ukraine conflict that have scrambled French politics.

“The systematic voter who voted out of duty, the voter who was loyal and faithful to political parties or to candidates… no longer exists,” said Anne Muxel, research director at Paris’ Centre for Political Research (Cevipof).

“Voters have a much more independent, individualised relationship to politics and to their electoral choices, they’re much more mobile, more volatile” — especially given that “the majority of French people don’t feel represented by political office-holders.”

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POLITICS

Macron warns of ‘civil war’ if far right or hard left win election

President Emmanuel Macron warned that the policies of his far-right and hard-left opponents could lead to ‘civil war’, as France prepared for its most divisive election in decades.

Macron warns of ‘civil war’ if far right or hard left win election

French politics were plunged into turmoil when Macron called snap legislative elections after his centrist party was trounced by the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) in a European vote earlier this month.

Weekend polls suggested the RN would win 35-36 percent in the first round on Sunday, ahead of a left-wing alliance on 27-29.5 percent and Macron’s centrists in third on 19.5-22 percent.

A second round of voting will follow on July 7th in constituencies where no candidate takes more than 50 percent in the first round.

Speaking on the podcast Generation Do It Yourself, Macron, 46, denounced both the RN as well as the hard-left France Unbowed party.

He said the far-right “divides and pushes towards civil war”, while the hard-left La France Insoumise, which is part of the Nouveau Front Populaire alliance, proposes “a form of communitarianism”, adding that “civil war follows on from that, too”.

Reacting to Macron’s comments, far-right leader Jordan Bardella told French news outlet M6: “A President of the Republic should not say that. I want to re-establish security for all French people.”

Bardella, the RN’s 28-year-old president, earlier Monday said his party was ready to govern as he pledged to curb immigration and tackle cost-of-living issues.

“In three words: we are ready,” Bardella told a news conference as he unveiled the RN’s programme.

READ ALSO What would a far-right prime minister mean for foreigners in France?

Bardella has urged voters to give the eurosceptic party an outright majority to allow it to implement its anti-immigration, law-and-order programme.

“Seven long years of Macronism has weakened the country,” he said, vowing to boost purchasing power, “restore order” and change the law to make it easier to deport foreigners convicted of crimes.

He reiterated plans to tighten borders and make it harder for children born in France to foreign parents to gain citizenship.

Bardella added that the RN would focus on “realistic” measures to curb inflation, primarily by cutting energy taxes.

He also promised a disciplinary ‘big bang’ in schools, including a ban on mobile phones and trialling the introduction of school uniforms, a proposal previously put forward by Macron.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal of Macron’s Renaissance party poured scorn on the RN’s economic programme, telling Europe 1 radio the country was “headed straight for disaster” in the event of an RN victory.

On Tuesday, Attal will go head-to-head with Bardella and the leftist Manuel Bompard in a TV debate.

On foreign policy, Bardella said the RN opposed sending French troops and long-range missiles to Ukraine – as mooted by Macron – but would continue to provide logistical and material support.

He added that his party, which had close ties to Russia before its invasion of Ukraine, would be “extremely vigilant” in the face of Moscow’s attempts to interfere in French affairs.

Macron insisted that France would continue to support Ukraine over the long term as he met with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.

“We will continue to mobilise to respond to Ukraine’s immediate needs,” he said alongside Stoltenberg at the Elysee Palace.

The election is shaping up as a showdown between the RN and the leftist Nouveau Front Populaire, which is dominated by the hard-left La France Insoumise.

Bardella claimed the RN, which mainstream parties have in the past united to block, was now the “patriotic and republican” choice faced with what he alleged was the anti-Semitism of Mélenchon’s party.

La France Insoumise, which opposes Israel’s war in Gaza and refused to label the October 7th Hamas attacks as ‘terrorism’, denies the charges of anti-Semitism.

In calling an election in just three weeks Macron hoped to trip up his opponents and catch them unprepared.

But analysts have warned the move could backfire if the deeply unpopular president is forced to share power with a prime minister from an opposing party.

RN powerhouse Marine Le Pen, who is bidding to succeed Macron as president, has called on him to step aside if he loses control of parliament.

Macron has insisted he will not resign before the end of his second term in 2027 but has vowed to heed voters’ concerns.

Speaking on Monday, Macron once again defended his choice to call snap elections.

“It’s very hard. I’m aware of it, and a lot of people are angry with me,” he said on the podcast. “But I did it because there is nothing greater and fairer in a democracy than trust in the people.”

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