Political forces in France are expected to make a final attempt on Friday to win votes in crucial parliamentary elections that could see the far right take power in government for the first time in history.
The official campaign period ends at midnight, followed by a holiday on Saturday, during which political activity is prohibited prior to voting on Sunday. Another week of campaigning then leads to the decisive second round on July 7.
The far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party is expected to win the election, potentially giving it the post of prime minister for the first time in its history, in a tense “cohabitation” with centrist President Emmanuel Macron.
Opinion polls show his centrist alliance will come only third, behind the RN and a broad but fragile left-wing coalition, the New Popular Front (NFP).
The leader of the RN party, Jordan Bardella28, would get the chance to lead a government as prime minister.
But he has insisted he will only do so if his party wins an absolute majority of the 577 seats in the National Assembly after the second round.
Macron’s friends and foes alike are still scratching their heads as to why the president dissolved the lower house of parliament and called new elections in the wake of his party’s heavy defeat in the EU Parliament vote. this month.
– ‘Serious message’ –
The RN’s three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen had heightened tensions in the run-up to the election by telling regional daily Telegramme that the president’s title as commander in chief of the armed forces was “honorable, because it is the prime minister who calls the shots”.
In a televised debate on Thursday evening, the Prime Minister said Gabriel Attal said Le Pen had sent a “clear message” by indicating that if the Royal Navy wins the election “there will be some kind of dispute between the Prime Minister and the President over who is commander-in-chief of the military”.
“It is a very serious message for the security of France,” he said.
But Bardella said in the debate that he “would not allow Russian imperialism to swallow up an allied state like Ukraine.”
He said he was also against sending longer-range missiles to Ukraine that could hit Russian territory “and put France and the French in a situation of joint belligerence.”
“My compass is the interests of France and the French,” said Bardella.
Macron has insisted he will serve out the remainder of his second term, until it expires in 2027, regardless of which party emerges victorious in the upcoming legislative battle.
Le Pen, who has long been accused by opponents of having too cozy a relationship with the Kremlin, suspects this could be her best chance ever to win the Elysee Palace after three previous attempts.
– ‘Real fear’ –
When he called early elections after the RN crushed the European Parliament elections on June 9, Macron hoped to present voters with a stark choice: should they hand France over to the far right?
An Ipsos poll published in Le Monde predicted the RN would win 36 percent of the vote, the NFP 29 percent and Macron’s alliance just 19.5 percent.
“The RN cannot only envisage a relative majority, but we cannot rule out an absolute majority either,” Brice Teinturier, deputy director of Ipsos, told AFP.
The televised debate, in which Attal and Bardella were joined by Socialist leader Olivier Faure, was as moody as the first session on Tuesday.
“Every time you’re in trouble, you change the subject,” Attal told Bardella. “He’s tense tonight, is Mr. Attal,” Bardella said.
Attal accused 100 RN candidates who took part in the elections of making “racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic remarks”.
“Everything is untrue, completely untrue,” responded Bardella, who also defended a controversial proposal to exclude people with dual nationality from sensitive state positions.
French basketball superstar Victor Wembanyama underlined the commitment felt by many in France from ethnic minority backgrounds, saying: “For me it is important to move away from extremes, which are not the direction we should take for a country like ours.”
Acclaimed black French filmmaker Alice Diop, meanwhile, told the Liberation newspaper that having the far right in the government would be “not only a moral inconvenience, but also a real fear.”
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