France’s Macron wins strong parly majority
FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron’s party and its allies have secured a powerful mandate after winning a commanding majority in the country’s parliamentary election, according to official results.
With 97 percent of votes counted in Sunday’s poll, Macron’s year-old La Republique en Marche (The Republic on the Move, LREM) gained 285 seats in the 577-member National Assembly.
Another 40 seats have been won by LREM’s allies, the centrist Democratic Movement of Justice Minister Francois Bayrou. Some 33 seats remained to be assigned. The vote comes just a month after 39-year-old Macron, a former banker, became the youngest head of state in modern French history, promising to clean up French politics and revive the eurozone’s secondbiggest economy.
France’s Socialist Party and its allies are projected to win just 34 seats, a dramatic collapse from its previous haul of 277 seats.
Socialist leader Jean-Christophe Cambadelis admitted a “historic defeat” for his party and resigned from his post.
Jean-Luc Melenchon’s far-left La France insoumise (Unbowed France) party and its Communist supporters are expected to hold 30 seats.
After four failed attempts to enter the National Assembly, recently defeated presidential candidate and National Front leader Marine Le Pen was finally elected as an MP in the far-right stronghold of HeninBeaumont, northern France. Her National Front party is predicted to secure six seats.
Turnout, though, was on course for a record low, a sign of voter fatigue after seven months of campaigning and voting — and also of disillusionment and anger with politics that could eventually complicate Macron’s reform drive. — Al Jazeera