Macron to face fragmented foes

Real opposition expected to be heard in streets

PARIS— President Emmanuel Macron’s barely year-old party is set to upend politics as France knows it.

But the rosy glow of a likely massive victory in next Sunday’s final round of French legislative elections could be dimmed without a robust opposition to debate controversial initiatives like far-reaching labor law reforms that scare some, anger others and risk sending those who want none of it into the streets.

France’s new leader, at 39 the youngest and just getting his feet wet in politics, aimed from the start to remake the political landscape, much of it populated with oldschool career politicians. Based on results from Sunday’s first round of voting, he is shattering it.

His fledgling Republic on the Move — fielding many candidates with no political experience — won 28 percent of the vote, putting it on course to take as many as 450 seats in the powerful 577-seat National Assembly, an unprecedented feat in France. Opponents occupying the remaining seats would represent a fragmented opposition, most without the 15 seats needed to even get speaking time, funding or other ways to weigh on policy.

Macron’s party decimated the Socialist Party that governed France for the past five years and got less than 7.5 percent of Sunday’s vote. It flattened the far-right National Front whose leader, Marine Le Pen, was vying with him for the presidency last month. The party got just over 13 percent of the vote. Macron’s closest rival, the mainstream conservatives, took less than 16 percent.

Such a parliament would be the most “monochrome of the Fifth Republic,” said Frederic Dabi of the Ifop polling firm, speaking on Cnews TV.

But another figure also stood out — the record-low voter turnout. Less than half of France’s 47.5 million electorate cast ballots.

The Le Figaro daily warned against the “optical illusion” created by the apparent sweep, noting in a commentary that with less than one in two voters casting ballots and a voting system that favors large political parties, the count racked up by Macron’s party “is far from equaling support.” Macron himself was massively elected on May 7 in large part to keep his rival, Le Pen, from power.

Macron is already being warned he will not have carte blanche.

With a super-majority all but assured in the legislature, “the opposition to Macron … will be in the street,” said Hall Gardner, chair for International and Comparative Politics at American University of Paris and a long-time observer of the French political scene.