Far right scents power as tense France gears up for snap vote

Paris - A divided France braced itself for high-stakes parliamentary elections that could see the anti-immigrant and eurosceptic party of Ms Marine Le Pen sweep to power in a historic first.

The candidates formally ended their frantic campaigns at midnight on June 28, with political activity banned until June 30’s first round of voting.

On June 29, voting began in France’s overseas territories that span the globe, with residents of the tiny archipelago of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, located off the coast of Canada, casting their ballots. They were followed by voters in France’s islands in the Caribbean and the South American territory of French Guiana.

Voting would start in territories in the Pacific and then in the Indian Ocean before it gets under way on the mainland on June 30.

Most polls show that Ms Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) is

on course to win the largest number of National Assembly seats

, though it remains unclear if the party will secure an outright majority.

A high turnout is predicted, and final opinion polls have given the RN between 35 per cent and 37 per cent of the vote, against 27.5 per cent to 29 per cent for the left-wing New Popular Front alliance and 20 per cent to 21 per cent for President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist camp.

That would put France

on course for political chaos

and confusion with a hung Parliament, said Mr Mujtaba Rahman, Europe head at the Eurasia Group risk consultancy.

“There is no precedent in recent French politics for such an impasse,” Mr Rahman said.

Mr Macron’s decision

to call snap elections

after the RN’s runaway victory in European Parliament elections in June stunned friends and foes, and sparked uncertainty in Europe’s second-biggest economy.

The Paris stock exchange suffered its biggest monthly decline in two years in June, dropping by 6.4 per cent.

In an editorial, French daily Le Monde said it was time to mobilise against the far right.

“Yielding any power to it means nothing less than taking the risk of seeing everything that has been built and conquered over more than 2½ centuries gradually being undone,” it said.

‘Racism and anti-Semitism’

Mr Brice Teinturier, head of the Ipsos polling firm, said there were two tendencies coming out of the campaign.

“One is a dynamic of hope”, with left-wing and RN supporters believing that “there can be a change”.

But Mr Teinturier also highlighted “the negative politicisation, the fear, the dread caused by the RN and in a part of the electorate by the France Unbowed and the coalition of the left”.

Mr Macron apparently hoped to catch political opponents off guard by presenting voters with a crucial choice about France’s future, but observers say he might have lost his gamble.

Many have pointed to a spike in hate speech, intolerance and racism during the charged campaign. A video of two RN supporters verbally assaulting a black woman has gone viral in recent days.

Speaking on the sidelines of a European summit in Brussels, Mr Macron deplored “racism or anti-Semitism”.

Support for Mr Macron’s centrist camp collapsed during the campaign, while left-wing parties put their bickering aside and formed the New Popular Front, in a nod to an alliance founded in 1936 to combat fascism.

Support for the far right has surged, with analysts saying Ms Le Pen’s years-long efforts to clean up the image of a party co-founded by a former Waffen-SS member have paid off.

“If we come to power, we’ll be able to demonstrate to the French people that we’ll keep our promises,” Ms Le Pen wrote on X, vowing to bolster French purchasing power and “curb insecurity and immigration”.

Under Mr Macron, France has been one of Ukraine’s main Western backers since Russia invaded in February 2022.

But Ms Le Pen and her 28-year-old lieutenant, party chief Jordan Bardella, have said they would scale down French support for Ukraine, by ruling out the sending of ground troops and long-range missiles.

Ms Le Pen has ratcheted up tensions further by saying that the President’s commander-in-chief title was purely “honorific”.

Power-sharing

If the far right obtains an absolute majority after the second round of voting on July 7, Mr Bardella could become prime minister in a tense “cohabitation” with Mr Macron.

His party’s path to victory could be blocked if the left and centre-right join forces against the RN in the second round.

A defiant Mr Macron has stood by his decision to call the elections, while warning voters that a win by the far right or hard left could spark a “civil war” in France.

He has insisted he will serve out the remainder of his second term until 2027, no matter which party wins the legislative contest. AFP