Left-wing parties seek anti-macron alliance

PARIS: France’s let-wing parties atempted on Friday to patch together an alliance ahead of June parliamentary elections which would give them a chance of thwarting newly re-elected President Emmanuel Macron.

The let fielded four major candidates in France’s April presidential election, spliting the vote. All of them were eliminated in the first round.

The hard-let France Unbowed party, the Socialists, the Greens and the Communists are now atempting to agree a united front before a weekend deadline ahead of the June 12 and 19 polls.

“I’m very hopeful that these negotiations will come to a successful end in the next few hours,” the head of the environmentalist EELV party, Julien Bayou, told the France 2 channel.

“We can agree on the fundamentals and much more,” he said, adding that “a deal was in sight” between his party and France Unbowed, known in French by its initials LFI.

The multi-party talks are being led by LFI chief Jean-luc Melenchon, who finished third in the presidential election and now the dominant figure on the French let.

The 70-year-old former Trotskyist has declared his aim of becoming prime minister under Macron in order to block the president’s reform plans which include raising the retirement age.

The Socialist Party, which is fighting for survival ater winning less than two percent in the presidential election, indicated Friday that it could broadly accept 12 core policy proposals by Melenchon.

These include raising the minimum wage, reducing the retirement age to 60 and rolling back labour market reforms.

But the party then suspended talks and called for a “guarantee” that all parties would be respected in the alliance and that Melenchon “ends any hegemonic way of thinking.”