To take advantage of the notoriety of his ruling cast, Macron advances to the legislative elections with 24 candidates who are part of his Government.
The government of French President Emmanuel Macron, threatened by the prospect of a historic defeat in the early legislative elections he called, moved forward strongly in the campaign battle. with the candidacy of 24 of its members.
With the deadline for the presentation of candidatures this Sunday, at 6:00 p.m. local time (5:00 p.m. in Lisbon), a good number of the “heavyweights” of the executive want a place in the next National Assembly, starting with the outgoing prime minister. , Gabriel Attal.
Among the candidates are also the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stéphane Séjourné, the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, the Minister of Health, Frédéric Valletoux, and the Minister of Tourism and Consumer Affairs, Olivia Grégoire.
Some important figures are not on the lists, such as the head of the Economy and Finance portfolio, Bruno Le Maire, who has been the Government’s “number two” since Macron won the presidential elections in 2017.
Le Maire explained that he had promised a long time ago that he would not be a deputy for more than three terms and that he is “a man of his word.”
Neither will the Minister of Defense, Sébastien Lecornu, the Minister of Justice, Éric Dupond-Moretti, nor the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, who until joining Macron’s Government at the end of January of this year was a leading figure in The Republicans (LR, the traditional party of the French right).
This large presence of members of the Government on the electoral lists illustrates the willingness to use public notoriety to turn around the polls for the elections of June 30 and July 7, which present a very adverse scenario for the bloc. centrist presidential.
They predict a victory for the far-right party National Union (RN, for its acronym in French), with more than 30% of the votes in the first round, followed by the new Popular Front, which brings together left-wing parties, with among 25% and 28% and, in third place, Macron’s bloc, with less than 20% of the votes.
From then on, the question will be to see how this translates, in the second round, into the distribution of the 577 parliamentary seats, which are elected in single-member constituencies.
The agreement for the creation of the Popular Front defined the distribution of candidates among the four formations that comprise it: France Insoumise (LFI, in its French acronym), of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, received 229; the Socialist Party (PS) with 175, the Ecologists with 92 and the French Communist Party (PCF) with 50.
Mélenchon is not a candidate and, although last Wednesday he said that he would be willing to be prime minister if the left won, today, given the discomfort that his personality generates in the rest of the coalition parties and even in a sector of his own party, He guaranteed that “it will never” be a problem, implying that he will leave his ambitions aside.
But there are leaders of other Popular Front parties, such as Olivier Faure, of the PS, Marine Tondelier, of the environmentalists (although as a substitute) and Fabien Roussel, of the PCF, who are part of the lists.
The former president of the Republic François Hollande (who was in the Elysée between 2012 and 2017) was also included on the PS list in his former electoral stronghold, Corrèze, despite his repeated clashes with Faure and his criticism in the past of any alliance with the LFI.
Under pressure from his Popular Front partners and even from numerous voices from the LFI, the outgoing deputy Adrien Quatennens, whose presence was controversial after being sentenced in 2022 to four months of preventive detention for having beaten his wife, withdrew his candidacy.
As for the controversial agreement signed this week between Marine Le Pen’s RN and LR president Éric Ciotti, without the knowledge and against the will of the majority of the latter party’s leaders, it is still too early to fully evaluate its scope.
This agreement provides that RN will not present candidates in 70 electoral districts, in which it will resort to voting for a candidate chosen by the LR faction that supported Ciotti. But there don’t seem to be any big names among the candidates proposed by LR in these circles.
Furthermore, the LR sector that condemned the alliance with RN chose to present rival candidates to those proposed by Ciotti, and Ciotti himself will have an opponent from LR in his Nice constituency.
Source: Observadora
