First modification:
There are twelve days to go until the second round of the presidential elections in France and the campaign on the ground continues for both candidates. Marine Le Pen was in Vernon, about 60 kilometers from Paris, and Emmanuel Macron in Mulhouse, Alsace. A day of crowds, exchanges and interrogations for the current president, and a press conference for the far-right candidate.
The two candidates for the second round of the French presidential elections faced each other on Tuesday, April 12, more than 500 kilometers apart, including on the possibility of changing the Constitution without going through Parliament.
Marine Le Pen said that she wanted to “reinvigorate” the country’s institutions and democratic functioning, at a press conference she gave in Vernon (Eure), about 60 kilometers from the capital. She defends full proportional representation in legislative elections to respond to the “democratic crisis”, and proposes the citizens’ initiative referendum.
However, to carry out these projects, it would have to go through article 89, which stipulates that the text must first be approved in identical terms by deputies and senators – where it does not have a political majority – before being submitted to all voters. .
It is not “true that we can review the Constitution directly,” Emmanuel Macron replied during his trip to Mulhouse: “We must first go through the two (parliamentary) chambers, it is our Constitution that provides for it and the Constitution, we must respect it.” “This means bringing all political forces together,” he said, referring to his constitutional reform promised in 2017 but aborted two years later after opposition from the majority-right-wing Senate.
Convergence on the seven-year term
The two opponents each defended the return of the seven-year legislature.
Marine Le Pen wants it to be “unextendable”, while, for Emmanuel Macron, a seven-year term is “a good pace for the presidential elections” and “a good respite compared to the pace of the legislative elections”, defending ” the renewable character.
The mandate of the President of the Republic was reduced from seven to five years from the presidential elections of 2002, after the referendum won by the “yes” (73.21%) two years earlier.
Towards an abandonment of the pension reform?
The challenge of the campaign between the two finalists continues to be capturing the electorate of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise (LFI), whose candidacy under the banner of the “Popular Union” obtained almost 22% of the votes cast.
To reassure this electorate, and French people more broadly worried about their purchasing power and living conditions, Emmanuel Macron said he was willing to modify what was considered the main proposal of his program: pension reform.
In an interview granted to the BFM TV channel on Monday, the outgoing president affirmed that the increase in the retirement age from 62 to 65 years was not “a dogma”, that he would carry out a wide consultation on the subject and that he would modify his project if it caused “too much angst”
“My project remains my project, I am not going to say here that I change my mind from one day to the next, however, I am open to discussion,” Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday.
In response to her opponent’s statements, Marine Le Pen spoke of maneuvering: “You can’t be so vague when you are an outgoing president and a candidate for re-election.”
With AFP and local media
#French #presidential #candidates #differ #institutions #pensions