Hints at re-election bid as Macron eyes recovery
PRESIDENT Emmanuel Macron’s plans for bringing France out of the pandemic are not just about resuscitating longclosed restaurants, boutiques and museums, but about preparing his possible campaign for a second term.
A year before the next presidential election, Mr Macron is focusing on saving jobs and reviving the pandemic-battered French economy as his country inches out of its third partial lockdown.
The centrist president’s ability to meet the challenge will be significant for his political future and for France – which is among the world’s worsthit nations with the fourth highest number of reported Covid-19 cases and the eighth highest death toll at more than 106,000.
While he has not officially declared his candidacy, Mr Macron has made comments suggesting he intends to seek re-election.
And he has pushed recent legislation on issues that potential rivals on the right and the left hold dear, from security to climate change.
Pollsters suggest Mr Macron, who four years ago became the youngest president in French history, has a good chance of winning the presidency in 2022 despite his government’s often-criticised management of the pandemic and earlier challenges to his policies, from activists protesting against what they see as social and economic injustice to unions angry at retirement reforms.
The coronavirus reopening strategy Mr Macron unveiled this month calls for most restrictions on public life to be lifted on June 30, when half of France’s population is expected to have received at least one vaccine shot.
With up to three million people in France getting vaccinated each week, the government plans to allow outdoor areas of restaurants and cafes, as well as museums and nonessential shops, to resume operating on May 19.
In an interview with French media, Mr Macron said he would visit France’s regions over the summer “to feel the pulse of the country” and to engage with people in a mass consultation aimed at “turning the page of that moment in the nation’s life”.
“No individual destiny is worthwhile without a collective project,” he said, giving the latest hint about a potential re-election bid.
At the moment, all opinion polls show Mr Macron and Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader he beat in a presidential run-off election in 2017, again reaching the run-off next year. The polls also forecast that Mr Macron would defeat the National Rally leader again, though by a smaller margin.
Mr Macron, 43, a former economy minister under his predecessor, Socialist president Francois Hollande, has characterised his policies as transcending traditional left-right divides. He was elected on a promise to make the French economy more competitive while preserving the country’s welfare system.
ISRAELI police have clashed with Palestinian protesters outside Jerusalem’s Old City during the holiest night of Ramadan in a show of force that threatened to deepen the holy city’s worst religious unrest in several years.
It comes after police blocked busloads of pilgrims headed to Jerusalem for prayer at Islam’s third holiest site. Police defended their actions as security moves, but were seen as provocations by Muslims who accuse Israel of threatening freedom of worship.