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03-07-2024
PARIS: French voters are waiting to see the full line-up for the second round of parliamentary elections, as scores of candidates stood aside in order to help defeat the far-right National Rally (RN).
Parties have until 18:00 (17:00 BST) Tuesday evening to register contenders for Sunday.
Only then will it be clear how many from the left and centre have abandoned the race in the hope of unifying the anti-RN vote.
Last Sunday’s first round produced a big victory for the party of Marine Le Pen, which with allies won around 33% of the vote.
A broad left-wing alliance came second, and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrists third but Ms Le Pen’s chances of winning an outright majority in the 577-seat National Assembly have been dented by the blocking tactics of her party’s enemies.
In more than half of constituencies around 300, three candidates qualified from the first round of voting (nearly everywhere else it was just two).
If in these constituencies one of the two non-RN runners’ stands aside, this increases the chances of the RN candidate being defeated.
By midday Tuesday around 200 candidates from the left and centre were understood to have taken the step. The left-wing New Popular Front (NPF) which comprises everyone from centre-left social democrats to far-left anti-capitalists issued instructions to all of its third-placed candidates to step down and let a centrist reap the anti-RN vote.
The NPF is thus helping two senior pro-Macron MPs, former Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin to win in their constituencies in Normandy and the north.
Conversely a pro-Macron candidate has stood down in order to help radical left-winger François Ruffin defeat the RN candidate in the northern city of Amiens.
The RN’s 28 year-old president and hopeful for prime minister, Jordan Bardella condemned these arrangements as the fruit of an “alliance of dishonor” between parties that until now have been at each other’s throats.
Instructions to candidates from Macron’s centrist bloc have been more ambiguous than the NPF’s.
Though Macron himself and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal have called for “no vote for the RN”, some in his camp believe its far-left component makes the NPF equally unpalatable. Senior figures like Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe both originally from the centre-right are refusing to issue instructions to vote systematically against the RN.
RN insiders told Le Figaro newspaper that its opponents’ tactics did not bother them.
“On the contrary, it’s good news. The overall message they’re giving out is that it’s the entire system which is against us… It’s another big stitch-up and our voters are tired of it,” one said.
RN leaders have said they will not attempt to form a government unless they are given an outright majority in the parliament in Sunday’s vote.
They say they do not want to be given the appearance of power, if the reality is they cannot pass laws.
However on Tuesday Marine Le Pen qualified this, when she said that a lower majority would be good enough, if it does not fall too far short of the 289 member threshold.
Speaking on French radio she said that winning around 270 deputies would allow her party to open talks with individual MPs from other groups in the hope of persuading them into an accord. (Int’l News Desk)
