Poll victory hollow for Macron if lacking MPs
FRANCE: Emmanuel Macron is scrambling to find credible candidates for France’s parliamentary elections in June amid concern he could become a lame-duck president without a majority in the national assembly.
Macron, 39, is confident of winning the second round of the presidential election on May 7, but would be powerless to implement his centrist pro-European programme without the backing of his own MPs.
With parliamentary elections generally held a month after the presidential polls, the newly elected head of state’s party tends to have the momentum and obtains a majority of seats without difficulty. This year could be different. Macron founded En Marche! (Let’s Move) only a year ago and has no sitting MPs behind him. He has pledged to field candidates in all 577 constituencies, half of whom will be women.
He has also pledged that half the candidates will have no political experience. The first 14 have already been designated, and they include a sociologist, a farmer, a hospital manager, a lawyer and a human resources director.
Macron hopes the other half of the En Marche! candidates will be sitting MPs who now represent a rival party. He plans to lure them from the ruling Socialists and opposition Republicans to run under his own brand.
It is a daring plan, given that there is no guarantee that MPs will flock to En Marche!, as he hopes, and even if they do, they may not retain their seats.
The Republicans and the Socialists alike appear intent on putting up their own candidates against En Marche! representatives, and commentators say the outcome of the parliamentary elections is difficult to predict.
Bruno Jeanbart, of the Opinionway polling institute, said Macron faced a ‘‘risk of seeing a majority escape him’’.
Under the French system, presidents call the shots if their party obtains a parliamentary majority.
They name the prime minister and the cabinet, dictate the agenda and decide which bills go before the national assembly.
Without a majority, however, the presidency becomes a largely ceremonial post with little handson power, at least in domestic affairs.
When there is a cohabitation – with a president from one side of the political spectrum and a parliamentary majority from the other – the prime minister calls the shots.
The last time France had a cohabitation was in 1997 when Jacques Chirac, the centre-Right president, called snap parliamentary elections and lost to the Socialists.
The danger for Macron is ending up like Chirac during that period – not doing much more than cutting ribbons. It is a danger facing Marine Le Pen, 48, too, if she becomes president.
– The Times