BID TO BLOCK FRENCH FAR-RIGHT
Some 180 candidates bow out of run-off election to avoid splitting votes
OPPONENTS of France’s National Rally (RN) stepped up their bid to block the far-right party from gaining power yesterday as more candidates bow out of this weekend’s run-off election to avoid splitting the anti-RN vote.
Some 180 candidates have confirmed they will not stand in Sunday’s second-round vote for France’s 577-seat Parliament, according to local media estimates.
Marine Le Pen’s RN came out well ahead in Sunday’s firstround vote after President Emmanuel Macron’s gamble on a snap election backfired, leaving his centrist camp in a lowly third place behind a hastily formed left-wing alliance.
But even before the manoeuvring of the last 24 hours to create a “republican front” to block the anti-immigrant, eurosceptic party, it was far from clear the RN could win the 289 seats needed for a majority.
Pollsters calculated the first round put the RN on track for anything between 250 to 300 seats. But that was before the tactical withdrawals and cross-party calls for voters to back whichever candidate was best placed to defeat the local RN rival.
“The match is not over,” the Socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, told France 2. “We must mobilise all our forces.”
There was initial confusion over whether Macron’s allies would stand down in favour of betterplaced rival candidates if they came from the radical left-wing France Unbowed (LFI) party of Jean-Luc Melenchon.
But Macron on Monday told a closed-door meeting of ministers that the top priority was blocking the RN from power and that LFI candidates could be endorsed if necessary.
The “republican front” worked before, such as in 2002 when voters of all stripes overwhelmingly backed Jacques Chirac to defeat Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, in a presidential contest.
But it is not certain voters today are willing to follow guidance from political leaders on where to place their vote, while Le Pen’s efforts to soften the image of her party has made it less hated for millions.
Yesterday, Le Pen repeated her assertion that the RN would not try to form a government if it and its allies did not have a workable majority in Parliament.
“We cannot agree to form a government if we cannot act. That would be the worst of betrayals for our voters,” she told France Inter radio.