France began a frantically short election campaign Monday, with President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance facing an uphill struggle to avoid a new defeat at the hands of the far right.
Macron called the snap parliamentary elections three years early in a dramatic gamble to shake up politics in France, after the far right trounced his centrists in European Union elections.
But with less than a fortnight before the vote, a new poll underlined fears about his alliance being squashed by new coalitions on the left and right.
According to the Ifop poll for the LCI TV channel, the far-right National Rally (RN) would take 33 percent of the vote, the New Popular Front left-wing alliance 28 percent and Macron’s ruling centrists just 18 percent.
Many in France remain baffled over why Macron called an election just weeks before the country hosts the Olympics, risking the RN leading the government and 28-year-old Jordan Bardella becoming prime minister.
“Emmanuel Macron, who triggered this dissolution to trap the parties, has ended up trapping himself,” said Le Monde daily, warning that the RN risked winning the election.
Candidates had until Sunday evening to register for the 577 seats in the lower house National Assembly ahead of the official start of campaigning at midnight. The first round of voting takes place on June 30, with the decisive second round coming seven days later.
‘Plunge into chaos’
Macron is due to return this week to the domestic campaign fray after fulfilling his engagements abroad, at the G7 summit in Italy and the Ukraine peace conference in Switzerland.
The personal stakes are huge for the president, who risks becoming a lame duck until his term expires in 2027. He then faces handing over power to the RN’s Marine Le Pen who is likely to run for the Élysée for a fourth time.
Former Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who famously bowed out of politics in 2002 after Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father, knocked him out of the presidential elections run-off, warned Macron of the perils ahead.
He told Le Monde the president had forced the country into a “hurried” campaign and was “giving the RN a chance to come to power in France.”
In an interview with the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, Former President Nicolas Sarkozy also warned that Macron was taking a risk for himself and the country, saying the move “could plunge France into chaos from which it will have the greatest difficulty in emerging.”
With AFP
