Macron’s majority not the landslide expected
Critics warn the president has 'no blank cheque' for reform, as landslide is not as great as predicted
French president Emmanuel Macron clinched an absolute majority in parliament last night but record abstention rates and a lower-thanexpected landslide prompted critics to warn he had no mandate for extreme reform. Exit polls showed Mr Macron’s centrist party, La République en Marche, would win around 355 out of 577 seats in the lower house together with its centre-right Modem ally.
FRENCH president Emmanuel Macron clinched an absolute majority in parliament last night, but record abstention rates and a lower-than-expected landslide prompted critics to warn he has no blank cheque for farreaching reform.
In the latest chapter in his “democratic revolution”, exit polls showed Mr Macron’s centrist party, La République en Marche, (Republic on the Move, or REM) – along with its centrist allies – was on course to win between 355 to 365 out of 577 seats in the lower house together with its centre-right Modem ally. Polls before the second round of the election predicted the count could be considerably higher.
But one survey suggested that 60 per cent of the French did not want the Macron majority to be too overbearing.
At 42 per cent, turnout was at a record low, an indication of voter fatigue after seven months of electoral campaigning – and also of anger with politics that could hamper Mr Macron’s reform drive.
Edouard Philippe, Mr Macron’s prime minister, said the result gave his party a “clear majority”.
“It will have one mission: to act for France. Through this vote, the vast majority of French have chosen hope over anger, confidence over turning in on themselves.”
The mainstream Right-wing party Les Républicains fared better than expected, notably in rural areas, winning 125 to 131 seats, the exit polls suggested. It was still its worst showing in the Fifth Republic. François Barouin, its campaign leader, said his party’s score placed it clearly in the position of “main opposition force on the benches of the National Assembly”.
Meanwhile, the Socialists, who had a ruling majority under former president François Hollande suffered a crushing defeat, taking 41 to 49 seats. Their historic losses triggered the resignation of leader Jean-christophe Cambadélis, eliminated in round one in his Paris constituency.
Far-left leader Jean-luc Mélenchon won in Marseille and his France Unbowed party took between 26 and 30 seats, the polls predicted. The record abstention rate, he said, suggested that the French had “entered a form of civil general strike”.
In a clear sign that he hopes for street protests, he said he saw the low turnout as “available energy as long as we know how to call it to arms”.
Meanwhile, the far-right Front National managed to salvage a handful of seats, from five to seven – up from two but far below the 60 to 80 it had hoped for a few weeks ago, and not enough to form a parliamentary group.
Crucially, however, its leader and defeated presidential candidate Marine Le Pen clinched her first seat in parliament for the Hénin Beaumont constituency in northern France. She won 58.75 per cent against an REM rival. “The massive abstention considerably weakens the legitimacy of the new National Assembly and this five-year term starts on very poor foundations,” she said.
The FN, she went on, would be “the only force of resistance against the dilution of France, its social model and its identity.” In another coup for the FN, lawyer Gilbert Collard just managed to beat former bullfighter Marie Sara in the southern Gard.
The vote came a month after 39-yearold former banker Emmanuel Macron became the youngest head of state in modern French history, promising to clean up French politics and revive the eurozone’s second-biggest economy.
Mr Macron now faces a tough task training up an army of MPS, half of whom are political novices, and then uniting them behind him as he sets out to overhaul the labour code, cut tens of thousands of public-sector jobs, and overhaul an unwieldy pension system.
Trade unions have warned that the French president must heed their demands and not use his majority to steamroll policy reforms through.
“The risks of protests and violence are high given how much tension there is in [French] society,” warned Laurent Berger, head of France’s CFDT union.
“There has never been such a paradox between a high concentration of power and strong tensions and expectations in terms of changes,” he told Le Journal du Dimanche.
“There is no place for euphoria in victory. There is no providential man, no miracle solution.”