Macron seeks parliamentary majority as left mounts challenge

PARIS • France voted in the first round of parliamentary elections yesterday, with President Emmanuel Macron hoping to win a majority backing for his reform plans while a resurgent and newly unified left seeks to thwart his ambitions.

Elections for the 577 seats in the Lower House National Assembly are a two-round process, with the shape of the new Parliament becoming clear only after the second round, which will be held next Sunday.

The ballots provide a crucial coda to April's presidential election, when Mr Macron won a second term and pledged a transformative new era after a first mandate dominated by protests, the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's war against Ukraine.

After a dismal performance in April, the French left has united in a coalition for what its leader Jean-Luc Melenchon dubs "the third round" of the presidential elections.

Opinion polls show the President's centrist alliance, Ensemble (Together), and Mr Melenchon's Nupes coalition of hard left, Socialists, Communists and Greens neck and neck in the popular vote - although the actual breakdown of parliamentary seats will depend on turnout in the second round.

The abstention rate is predicted to be well over 50 per cent in the first round, in what would be a new record for elections already marked by feeble participation in recent years.

At 5pm, turnout was 39.4 per cent, down from 40.8 per cent at the same time during the previous elections in 2017, according to the Interior Ministry.

"I voted tactically in the presidential election, and that didn't change a thing," unemployed 59-year-old Alain Mendez said at an outdoor cafe in Toulouse, south-western France. "So today I'd rather do my gardening instead, and cook for my grandchildren."

If the President's alliance retains an overall majority, Mr Macron will be able to carry on governing as before. Falling short could prompt messy Bill-by-Bill deals with right-wing parties in Parliament, or an unwanted Cabinet reshuffle.

A win by the left-wing alliance - seen as unlikely by analysts - would spell political disaster for the President by raising the spectre of a clunky "cohabitation", where the prime minister and president hail from different factions.

Such a set-up has paralysed French politics in the past, most recently from 1997 to 2002, when right-wing president Jacques Chirac ruled in tandem with Socialist Lionel Jospin as prime minister.

Mr Melenchon, a former Marxist, has already made clear his ambition to become prime minister and stymie Mr Macron's plan to raise the French retirement age, a key part of his reform plans.

Opinion polls have indicated that Mr Macron's alliance is expected to win the largest number of seats, but is by no means assured of getting over the line of 289 for an absolute majority.

While Mr Macron and his European Union allies breathed a heavy sigh of relief after his solid, if unspectacular, presidential victory against far-right leader Marine Le Pen, the last weeks have brought no sense of a honeymoon.

Mr Macron has made clear that ministers standing in the election - including his new Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, who is making her first attempt at winning a seat - will have to step down if they lose.

Mr Macron's party and his allies hold an absolute majority of 345 seats in the 577-seat assembly.

Under France's system, a candidate needs more than half the vote on the day and the backing of at least 25 per cent of registered voters in a constituency to be elected outright in the first round. Otherwise, the top two candidates in a constituency, and any other candidate who won backing from at least 12.5 per cent of registered voters, go to the second round, where the candidate with the most votes wins.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE