Le Pen wins the election and Macron makes a desperate plea to the French people
Marine Le Pen is celebrating this Sunday as her party won 34% of the vote. President Emmanuel Macron is calling for unity in the face of the extreme right.
The leader of the National Rally (RN), Marine Le Pen is celebrating this Sunday after her party won an estimated 34% of the vote in the first round of legislative elections in France. That is nearly double the vote that her political formation got in 2022 in the first round.
She said as results showing her victory came in that “democracy has spoken” and has “annihilated the Macronist bloc.” Le Pen is urging voters to give the National Rally an absolute majority when they cast their ballots in the second round to be held next Sunday 7 July. That would allow her party to govern France comfortably with her hand-picked candidate as prime minister.
President Emmanuel Macron, for his part, has made a desperate plea to French voters to block the extreme right.
Le Pen wins the election asks voters for absolute majority
“We need an absolute majority for Jordan Bardella to be appointed prime minister by Emmanuel Macron in eight days,” she said addressing a jubilant crowd. According to her point of view, the result reflects “the will of the French people to turn the page” and she described the current government as “contemptuous and corrosive”.
Many polls reveal that there is the possibility of an absolute majority for the RN in the second round. A scenario that would raise the 28-year-old candidate Jordan Bardella to the post of Prime Minister.
Le Pen insisted that her electorate and those voters that didn’t vote for her party in the first round to do so in the second round. “To be able to govern effectively we must have an absolute majority next week. Next week we will have an absolute majority. And we will put an end to Macronism and its nefarious power for France,” she expounded. In a similar speech, Bardella himself delivered he said “France is in existential danger. We must rebuild it.”
At the same time, Bardella wanted to launch a message to the French president, Emmanuel Macron. “I will be respectful of the presidency of the Republic, but also inflexible with our project. We will respect the democratic rules. I will be the guarantor of the freedoms of the people of France.”
An absolute majority would provoke a new chapter of ‘cohabitation’ in France, an awkward power-sharing situation where the president and prime minister are from opposite sides of the political spectrum.
Macron makes a desperate plea to the French people
Speaking to Agence France-Presse, French President Emmanuel Macron believes that the high turnout demonstrates the desire of the French to “clarify the political situation.” He has also called for a large “democratic and republican” demonstration of unity against RN. Macron has called for a “broad” alliance against Le Pen’s party for the second round of the elections in eight days’ time.
“Faced with the National Rally, the time has come for a broad, unequivocally democratic and republican alliance for the second round,” Macron said in a statement.
What is cohabitation and its precedents in France
The term refers to the situation where the President of the Republic, and the Prime Minister, are from different political parties. In this case it would be Macron (Renaissance) and Bardella (RN) in those respective roles.
It would not be the first time that there was a cohabitation of two people from opposing political formations in both positions. It was in 1986 that this phenomenon occurred for the first time, with the socialist François Mitterrand as head of state and Jacques Chirac as prime minister.
In 1993, Mitterrand was at the head of the Elysée, the conservative Édouard Balladur was at the head of the government. Then, between 1997 and 2002, the tables were turned. It was the conservative Chirac who was head of state, and the socialist Lionel Jospin, prime minister.