Macron faces far-right challenge as France votes

PARIS - French voters yesterday cast their ballots in the opening round of a presidential race that could become a cliffhanger.

Emmanuel Macron has a fight on his hands from farright challenger Marine Le Pen, who has been galvanised by a slick election campaign.

Forty-nine million people are eligible to decide which two of 12 candidates should take part in the run-off vote. But after four hours after voting started, only a quarter of voters had turned out - the lowest for 20 years.

The campaign has been overshadowed first by the Covid-19 pandemic and then Russia’s invasion. The president has spent little time on the race, focusing instead on Europe’s reaction to the war in Ukraine.

However, one issue more than any other has predominated the election: the spiralling cost of living in energy bills and shopping baskets.

When he came to power with a new party in 2017, Emmanuel Macron swept away the old allegiances, and the two big parties are still nursing their wounds.

Socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo has struggled to be heard, while on the right Valérie Pécresse has failed to excite the Republicans.

Now, the main challenge to Macron, 44, is coming from Le Pen on the far right and

Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the far left.

What adds to the uncertainty is that days before the vote, one Ipsos opinion poll suggested 37 percent of people were still undecided.

“The campaign’s been going on for two months and there hasn’t been much debate,” complains Ourdia, a café owner in north-west Paris. “I still don’t know who to vote for.”

The old tribal tradition of voting either for the left or right has gone. One market trader in Paris said he was yet to decide whether to vote for Marine Le Pen, 53, or 70-yearold Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

After she was trounced by Macron in 2017, Le Pen rebranded her National Front as National Rally, even if many of her policies have hardly changed. She has also come across as more moderate than far-right rival candidate Eric Zemmour. – BBC.