Macron: 39-year-old French prodigy eyeing a presidency
“Neither of the right, nor the left” in his own words, Emmanuel Macron is a 39-year-old former banker hoping to convince the French to take a chance on his brand of youthful optimism. He has never been elected and only launched his party last April, but polls currently show Macron as one of the frontrunners for the twostage election next Sunday and on May 7.
After quitting his job as economy minister under unpopular President Francois Hollande in August, he has concentrated on building up his own centrist political movement called “En Marche” (“On the Move”). The accomplished pianist and lover of poetry was initially dismissed by sceptics as appealing to a narrow group of young, urban professionals but his packed rallies and voter surveys show otherwise. “We can’t respond with the same men and the same ideas,” Macron said as he launched his presidential bid in November at a jobs training centre in a gritty Parisian suburb.
With frustration at France’s political class running high, Macron has tapped into a desire for wholesale change that has also propelled far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon. “I’m here because he’s young, he’s dynamic. It’s like a breath of fresh air,” 23-year-old shop worker Marine Gonidou told AFP at a rally in Brittany in January. At 39, Macron would be the youngest French leader in modern history, upending tradition that has seen voters tend to favour experience in their powerful presidents.
‘Uber-isation’
Although positioned as an outsider, the brilliant student followed a well-worn path through elite French universities including ENA, which serves as a finishing school for top civil servants and future leaders. After going into banking, where he earned nearly 2.4 million euros ($2.6 million) from 2011-2012 at Rothschild, Macron became an economic advisor to Hollande in 2012 and then economy minister two years later.
During his time in government, he is best known for a free-market law that bears his name which liberalised the bus sector, allowed large stores to open at weekends and offered investment incentives to farmers. The legislation was strongly contested by France’s powerful trade unions and had to be rammed through parliament using executive powers, but it helped cement his image as an economic reformer. “I want us to be able to start a business more easily, to innovate more easily” is one of his mantras, repeated at rallies and explained in his pre-election book “Revolution”.
As well as wanting to improve the business environment, he stresses the need to improve education in deprived areas and has spoken out against stigmatizing Muslims with France’s strict rules on secularism. His championing of tech firms and the “Uber-isation” of the economy, in which people increasingly work as independents rather than as employees, has helped burnish his image as a modernizer. After looking the most likely next president for the last few months, polls have shown support for him falling slightly in recent weeks. The outcome of the election will be the ultimate test of his claim that France is “contrarian”-ready to elect a pro-EU, pro-globalization liberal at a time when rightwing nationalists are making electoral gains across the world. — AFP