Macron wins presidency in France, eyes majority
Le Pen gets record vote for far right
PARIS — Freshly elected to the French presidency, Emmanuel Macron now faces an equally difficult Act II: securing the parliamentary majority he needs to make good on his campaign promises to lift France out of economic gloom.
With legislative elections just five weeks away, the start-up political movement the 39-yearold former investment banker launched one year ago on his meteoric ride to become France’s youngest president lost no time Monday in girding for the crucial mid-June election battle.
Without a working majority, Macron could quickly become a lame-duck president, unable to push through labour reforms and other measures he promised to the broadly disgruntled electorate — as shown by a record result for his defeated far-right opponent, Marine Le Pen, and a record number of blank and spoiled ballots in Sunday’s runoff vote.
The transfer of power to Macron will take place Sunday, outgoing President François Hollande announced. Macron is already looking the part. He shed his breezier campaign demeanour for a solemn, more statesman-like look in his first appearances after his victory and again Monday, at a sober ceremony with Hollande to commemorate Germany’s defeat in the Second World War.
It was the first time Hollande and Macron had appeared together in public since August 2016. That was when Macron resigned as Hollande’s economy minister to embark on his risky presidential run as an independent — a decision received coldly by the French leader at the time.
On Monday, though, Hollande gripped Macron’s arm before the two men walked side by side. The ceremony marked decades of peace in Western Europe, something Macron made a cornerstone of his campaign against Le Pen’s brand of nationalist populism. Le Pen campaigned for France to leave the 28-nation European Union and drop the shared euro currency in favour of reinstating a new French franc.
To move into the presidential Élysée Palace, Macron is preparing for his first days in power. Sylvie Goulard, a French deputy to the European Parliament, said Macron would make Berlin his first official visit, with perhaps a stop to see French troops stationed abroad as well.
Macron’s En Marche! (On the Move) political movement plans to field candidates for all 577 National Assembly seats. As part of his effort to convince voters that both he and his movement marked a break with the status quo, Macron promised that half of its candidates will be new to elected politics.
Split 50-50 between men and women, they’ll have Macron’s example for inspiration: Contesting his first election, he handily beat Le Pen with 66 per cent of Sunday’s vote and tore up France’s political map.
But Le Pen’s 34 per cent — a high in any national election for her far-right National Front — confirms her party as a formidable force, its French-first nationalism increasingly accepted by a growing swath of electors despite its history of antiSemitism and racism. The National Front has two lawmakers in the outgoing parliament but hopes for dozens in June.
Mainstream parties on the left and right also are regrouping, aiming to clip Macron’s wings and impose their political agenda, via parliament, on his five-year term.