With their own and France’s fates in the balance, candidates were making their last campaign pushes Friday for the first round of voting in the country’s pivotal legislative election. French President Emmanuel Macron’s center-right grouping risks a potentially fatal beating at the hands of the surging far-right National Rally (RN) party.
With polls indicating the anti-immigrant RN could greatly increase its representation in the National Assembly, the election could radically alter the trajectory of the European Union’s largest country and hamstring Macron for the remainder of his presidential term.
In a strong second place are the parties of the left-wing coalition, New Popular Front, who are deterimined to block the RN, which they see as a neo-fascist party and a threat to democracy. They’ve encouraged Macron to get behind them in order to block the extreme right, but the president has refused.
Coming on the heels of a strong showing in European Parliament elections by the right earlier this month, this weekend’s vote also risks saddling Macron with a National Rally prime minister, Jordan Bardella.
Bardella, a 28-year-old protege of National Rally leader Marine Le Pen who has no governing experience, says he would use the position to stop Macron from continuing to supply long-range weapons to Ukraine. He cites fears that the weapons’ ability to strike targets in Russia could suck the nuclear-armed powers of France and Russia into direct confrontation.
Despite the RN’s history as an anti-Semitic party, many leaders from the French corporate and banking sectors are rushing to Bardella and Le Pen, out of fear over the New Popular Front.
>> Read People’s World analysis of the French elections:
The New Popular Front: French left unites to block fascism
>> And watch the latest episode of Good Morning Revolution:
Good Morning Revolution! The Rise of the Far Right & The Popular Front: Lessons from France
France’s two-round system of voting — with initial balloting on Sunday to thin down the field for decisive follow-up voting on July 7 — means the election’s ultimate outcome is very uncertain.
Macron dissolved parliament’s lower house and called the early election in hopes of shoring up support for his government in the wake of its humiliating defeat in the June 9 European Parliament vote.
Macron’s decision has had the effect of galvanizing previously splintered parties into the New Popular Front, which has coalesced behind promises of massive public spending, the reversal of Macron’s retirement age hike, affordable housing, and greener environmental policies.
On the far-right, the National Rally has been bolstered by defections from the traditional right, which has shattered in the campaign shake-up. It could also draw voters from other far-right fringe parties.
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