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French President Macron lashes out in a speech, saying everything to the left and right of his party is extreme. It remains to be seen whether the speech will help him.
Paris- Emmanuel Macron is combative. And this despite the fact that he is only criticized most of the time and is not wanted as a face in his own party. “The masks have fallen and the battle of values has broken out in the open,” Macron said at a press conference in Paris. He also reflected on the hectic political restructuring that was set in motion by his decision to call new elections. It was Macron’s first appearance after his decision to dissolve the National Assembly.
The tone of his speech was grim: the French president described the upcoming parliamentary elections as a tussle between his moderate camp and two “unnatural alliances” that have emerged on the “extreme left” and the “extreme right”. The two rounds of the French parliamentary elections will take place on June 30 and then on July 7.
“Today the matter is very simple: we have unnatural alliances at both extremes that agree on nothing except the tasks to be shared,” Macron said in his speech. He called on moderate voters to to join forces and form its coalition government to support.
In his speech, Macron attacks everyone to his left and right
At the beginning of his speech, he took a sharp shot at Eric Ciotti, leader of the conservative party Les Républicains. The latter caused outrage when he spoke out in favor of supporting Marine Le Pen’s “Rassemblement National” last Tuesday. Ciotti had made a “pact with the devil,” Macron said. He accused the conservatives of “turning their backs on the legacy of General de Gaulle, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.”
Macron also took a sharp shot at the left. They have joined together to form a new “popular front” for the upcoming election. He accused Jaen-Luc Mélenchon’s party “La France insoumise” of anti-Semitism. Their attitude to the war between Israel and Hamas is unacceptable. The alliance is “not only baroque, it is indecent,” he raged, alluding to Léon Blum. He “should be turning in his grave.” Blum was an icon of the left who led the anti-fascist popular front in the 1930s.
To make his views clear, Macron deliberately used the terms “extrême gauche” (in English: extreme left) and “extrême droite” (in English: extreme right) in his speech. The Conseil d’État rejected the proposal, according to france24 rejects the classification of the left-wing alliance as “extreme left”. This is less true, however, of Marine Le Pen’s “National Rally“: The party is considered to be right-wing extremist in France. The Conseil d’État is the highest administrative authority in France.
Marine Le Pen’s right-wing extremists are forming – Macron is looking for allies among the people
Macron’s surprise move to dissolve the lower house came shortly after the European electionsin which Le Pen’s Rassemblement National won with over 30 percent of the vote – more than twice the 14.6 percent that Macron’s alliance was able to muster.
As the far right in France reaches an all-time high, polls predict that the Rassemblement National will win the most seats in the National Assembly, perhaps even an absolute majority. This could lead to France’s first far-right government since World War II.
At the press conference on Wednesday, Macron rejected accusations that his actions would only help the right. He called on “men and women of good will to work together to build a common project” for the country. This appeal had already worked for Macron twice. The first time in the 2017 elections and then in 2022. However, many voters were rather reluctant to support Macron, because in France there is always a run-off election between the candidates who received the most and second most votes in the first round. In 2022, French voters then had the options of Macron and Le Pen. For many, this was probably a choice for the lesser evil.
“The aim is to bring about a repeat of the presidential runoffs in each of France’s 577 constituencies,” said Pierre-Nicolas Baudot, a political analyst at the University of Clermont-Ferrand. “The presidential camp will present these elections as a choice between Macron and chaos,” he continued.
“But this is a very risky strategy, because the extreme right has become ‘normalized’ in the eyes of many voters.” Baudot also pointed out that Macron’s government had helped to normalize Le Pen’s anti-immigration party, because they themselves pushed through a controversial immigration law with the support of the Rassemblement National.
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