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Macron urges solid parliament majority amid ‘troubled times’

French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday appealed to voters to give him a "solid majority" in Sunday's parliamentary polls, warning against adding "French disorder to global disorder".

Published: 15 June 2022 09:39 CEST

Macron urges solid parliament majority amid 'troubled times'

Photo by GONZALO FUENTES / POOL / AFP

Speaking as he departed from Paris to visit French troops dispatched to Romania in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Macron said “the months ahead will be difficult”.

But he called for people to back him in the name of “the higher national interest” and “common sense”.

Macron’s visit this week to Romania and neighbouring Moldova comes just ahead of the second round of crucial parliamentary elections in which his majority is at risk.

“Emmanuel Macron has planned a trip abroad for three days… after anaesthetising the campaign by refusing any debate, he saw the second round as a done deal,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the left-wing Nupes alliance, told Le Parisien daily.

Déclaration avant de rejoindre nos militaires déployés en Roumanie. https://t.co/NjQRyPayyt

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) June 14, 2022

As the head of state, Macron is technically not supposed to campaign in the parliamentary elections, leaving that up to his Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.

In the first round of voting on Sunday, his Ensemble (Together) alliance of centrist parties finished neck-and-neck with the leftist alliance Nupes.

Projections suggest voters could hand Ensemble 255-295 seats in the second round — uncomfortably low compared with the threshold for an absolute majority of 289.

France deployed 500 troops to Romania following Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.

Speaking to around 200 French soldiers at a NATO base in Romania on Tuesday, Macron said they were “the pride of France” and hailed them for the “fundamental” commitment to protect eastern European countries threatened by Russia.

On Wednesday, Macron is due to meet Romanian President Klaus Iohannis before visiting Moldova, where fears of a spillover from the Ukraine conflict have spiked after incidents in the pro-Moscow breakaway region of Transnistria.

There have been press reports — so far unconfirmed — that Macron could make his first visit to Ukrainian capital Kyiv since the assault began in February, alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

But “people (in France) are really worried about petrol, purchasing power, not about him going to visit French soldiers abroad,” one anonymous parliamentary candidate for Ensemble complained to Le Parisien.

Macron acknowledged on Tuesday “disorder in our everyday lives,” telling voters “you’re already paying more for your gas, your petrol, your groceries, and the months ahead will be difficult.”

“In these troubled times, the choice you have to make this Sunday is more crucial than ever,” he added, calling both on people who had voted for other candidates and non-voters to rally behind him.

While the campaign has been dominated by inflation and other economic impacts of the Ukraine war, the left is also trying to make it a referendum on Macron’s plans to raise the minimum retirement age to 65 and reform the pension system.

But all sides have struggled to get voters excited about the poll, with just 47.5 percent turning out on Sunday.

Since early-2000s reforms to the electoral calendar, interest in the legislative vote — which follows on the heels of the presidential poll — has dwindled, as it has always given the head of state a handy majority.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.