France’s New Popular Front (NPF), which won the most seats in Sunday’s parliamentary election, has called on President Emmanuel Macron to ask it to form a government.
But the president Tuesday addressed the nation saying that since no bloc had a majority, he intended to keep current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal in place until a compromise coalition had been built up – and even hinting it should not include representatives of the biggest part of the NPF, the left-wing France Unbowed party (France Insoumise), led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
The NPF won 180 seats to 159 for Ensemble (Together), Macron’s bloc, and outpolled it by over two million votes. The two must cooperate to form a governing majority.
The NPF told the president that his “prolonged retention” of Attal of Ensemble as prime minister looks like an attempt to erase the election result (in which Ensemble lost its majority) and that he should “immediately turn to the New Popular Front.
“We solemnly warn the president against any attempt to hijack the institutions,” it added. French Communist newspaper L’Humanité reported Wednesday that establishment politicians were maneuvering to block the radical program that NPF parliamentarians were elected on, including reducing the retirement age, raising wages, and introducing price controls to battle inflation.
The NPF is “the leading Republican force in this country and it is therefore our responsibility to form a government [and] implement the policies expected by the French people,” its MP Cyrielle Chatelain, of the Greens, said.
But Macron said he would take “a little time” before appointing a prime minister, calling for a coalition with a majority to be presented first and saying it should adhere to what he terms “Republican values,” widely reported in French corporate media as excluding the socialist left as well as the far-right National Rally.
The NPF is a four-party alliance of the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Greens, and France Unbowed, and its own components are currently negotiating on a candidate for PM.
The Socialists, the most centrist of the NPF parties, are publicly insisting that France Unbowed leader Mélenchon be ruled out.
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