Leftist and centrist parties in France are attempting to join forces to stop Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally party from taking power.
Last Sunday, National Rally won 34% of the vote; the left-wing New Popular Front won 28.12%, and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, the Ensemble Coalition, won 20% of the vote. A second vote will be taken on Sunday.
“The second round of a French parliamentary is generally made up largely of run-off duels between the top two candidates in a constituency, but because so many third-placed candidates qualified on Sunday, that set up more than 300 three-way run-offs,” the BBC noted. That would make it easier for a candidate from Le Pen’s party to win.
Thus, at least 200 candidates from the centrist and leftist parties — 134 from the Left and 82 from Macron’s party, according to Le Monde — have withdrawn from the race so that in their constituencies, Le Pen’s party will see their candidate running against only one opponent, the one thought to have the best chance of winning.
After the election last Sunday, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the head of the hard-Left party France Unbowed (which joined a coalition with the New Popular Front) and has refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization, advised any of his candidates who had finished third to withdraw, Politico reported.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, aligned with Macron, echoed the message, saying, “In such circumstances, France deserves that we not hesitate.”
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But some centrists who strongly oppose the hard-Left would not countenance supporting them in order to defeat the National Rally party because of their penchant for spending and their opposition to supporting the state of Israel in its war against Hamas. “Senior figures like Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and former prime minister Edouard Philippe – both originally from the center-right – are refusing to issue instructions to vote systematically against the RN,” the BBC reported.
On Tuesday, Le Pen also accused Macron of a “administrative coup d’état” after being apprised that he was getting ready to make important appointments in the police and army.
“When you want to counter the results of an election by nominating your people to jobs, and when that stops [the government] from being able to carry out policies which the French people have asked for … I call that an administrative coup d’état. … I hope it is only rumor,” she said.