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PALAISEAU, France – Five years ago, Amélie de Montchalin, a politician better known for his quiet technocratic skills than his eloquence, easily won election to Congress from this southern Parisian suburb. , and later became one of President Emmanuel Macron’s ministers.
But at a small protest last week, in danger of losing her seat to a left-wing opponent in this year’s parliamentary elections, she launched an unusually fiery protest, accusing the left of promoting pushing the “perspective of disorder” will lead France to “Submit” to Russia.
If the left wins, Madame de Montchalin told the crowd gathered in a sunlit square, “in a few weeks or a few months, there will be bankruptcies and unemployed people.”
Her outburst reflects the fierce rhetorical battle that Mr Macron’s centrist forces and a coalition of leftist candidates are waging ahead of time. second round of voting in parliamentary elections on Sunday. Mr. Macron’s bets are high because defeat could thwart his majority in the National Assembly, France’s more powerful parliament, and thwart his ambitious agenda.
Supporters of Mr Macron describe a potential victory for the coalition and its leader, the leftist politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon, as a catastrophe that would destroy France. The left says Mr Macron and his allies are panicking because they are losing power and they accuse the president holding photo sessions in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, as he sought to mediate in the Ukraine war instead of caring about the French electorate.
Both sides are trying to hunt down the roughly 52.5% of French voters who did not vote last Sunday, the lowest level in the first round of a legislative election since 1958.
Polls and projections suggest it may be difficult for Mr Macron’s coalition of centre-right parties, known as Ensemble, to retain the absolute majority it enjoyed during his previous term and that has allowed him promote the law relatively unhindered.
Instead, the president can be left with a relative majority – more seats than any other political force, but no more than half of the 577 seats in Congress – forcing him to cross the aisle for certain bills.
“Even if he has the majority, it is likely that he will have to negotiate more,” said Olivier Rosenberg, an associate professor at Sciences Po in Paris. After five years Mr. Macron’s top-down management styleleaving many lawmakers feeling sidelined, “the logic of governance is likely to be a little less vertical,” said Mr. Rozenberg.
A few weeks ago, Mr. Macron seemed capable of securing an absolute majority after convincingly defeat Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, in the presidential race. Over the past 20 years, voters have generally given their president-elect strong congressional support.
Afterward, Famous left-wing parties of France unexpectedly agree to set aside major economic and foreign policy differences, at least temporarily, and create an alliance for the parliamentary election known as the NUPES, for the Union Nouvelle Populaire Écologique et Sociale, which included Mr. Mélenchon’s France Unbowed Party, and the Socialists, Greens and Communists. In the first round last Sunday, they finished antiquities with Mr. Macron’s alliancewith about 25% of the vote.
Pointing to the left-wing coalition’s proposals, which include amending France’s Constitution and increasing the monthly minimum wage to $1,580, Mr. so Mr. Mélenchon with Hugo Chávez, the former Venezuelan populist leader. They warned that a victory for the left would bring France back.”Regulations of the Soviet Union“And bring one”financial guillotine in all levels. They also accused Mr. Mélenchon of being too soft on Russia.
Jérôme Guedj, a Socialist running for a left-wing coalition in the Essonne division against Madame de Montchalin, lamented what he called “demonization, caricature and fusion” that reflected “panic fear” of Mr. Macron and his party of possible defeat.
“It really reminds me of 1981,” Mr. Guedj said, referring to the year François Mitterrand, the Socialist leader, won the presidency with the support of French Communists. “People say, ‘There will be Russian tanks on the Place de la Concorde.'”
The left has accused itself. Mélenchon’s supporters say the government is secretly planning a value-added tax increase to reduce the country’s deficit, an assertion Macron’s coalition has called a lie.
The speed with which Mr. Macron went from flirting with the left in the presidential election to fighting the left in the parliamentary vote is partly a result of France’s two-round electoral system. But it is also an example of The changing political nature of Mr. Macronand the fact that his side has gradually occupy an expansion center with radical opponents on both sides, Mr. Rosenberg said.
Macroism grows by eating within its margins, by eating to the center of the left and eating to the center of the right, rather than creating alliances or negotiating coalitions, he said.
This shape shift is not without confusion. The president’s coalition initially struggled to give clear voting instructions to supporters in districts where Ms. Le Pen’s party was confronting the ruling left-wing candidates, sometimes describing describe both forces as equally threatening. The Party leaders ultimately insisted that “not one vote” should go to the right.
But some of Mr Macron’s supporters are divided on the issue.
Michèle Grossi, 74, a retiree from a constituency near Paris where the far right and left will go head to head on Sunday, said she would vote for Ms Le Pen’s candidate in the event of no There is candidate Macron because she is “very afraid of Mélenchon. Another supporter of Mr Macron, Christophe Karmann, said that under the same scenario he would favor the left because it is a “republican force”.
Ms. Grossi also echoed the concern of some of the president’s supporters that he had been withdrawn from the campaign, saying it was “regrettable that Macron did not say more.”
Mr. Macron tried to dispel that notion last week, issuing dire warnings about what was at stake in this election. In a solemn speech Tuesday on the tarmac of Orly airport, south of Paris, he said that “in these difficult times” the vote is “more important than ever”. He urged voters to give him a “solid majority” in the “great interest of the nation.”
Mr. Macron, who is set to make a trip to Eastern Europe, in part to visit French troops deployed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, said:
But Mr Macron’s comments, made with the presidential plane’s engines throbbing in the background, failed to quell accusations from opponents that he had avoided public confrontation.
“His ship is sinking and Macron is on a plane,” Mr. Mélenchon said mockingly at a rally in Toulouse. In an interview with Le ParisienMr. Mélenchon said the French president was disconnected from ordinary people’s concerns about rising food and energy costs.
“He doesn’t understand French society,” he said. “He doesn’t realize how people are being suffocated by prices.”
In the Essonne department, Ms. de Montchalin, who is currently the minister in charge of France’s green transition, trailed Guedj by 7 percentage points after the first round. She is one of 15 ministers running for a seat in Parliament and who has been warned by Mr Macron that losing would mean leaving. his closet.
To bolster support during last week’s protest, Madame de Montchalin invited a notable guest: Bruno Le Maire, France’s longtime Finance Minister. He told the crowd that the economy had improved – unemployment had gone down fall to 7.3%, the lowest in a decade – and unlike Mr. Mélenchon, Mr. Macron does not promise “a bright future on credit”.
But Ms. de Montchalin’s campaign staff admits it will be a difficult election.
Mr. Karmann said he had bet with friends that if Mr. Macron’s party failed to assemble a solid working majority, the president would dissolve Parliament and call new elections. In the next five years, he said, France “will be difficult to run”.
Méheut remains unchanged reported from Palaiseau, France, and Aurelien Breeden from Paris.
