Francois Fillon

Macron Likely to Diffuse Tensions as Independence Vote Looms in New Caledonia

With many French politicians preferring that it remain part of France, Macron’s handling of the referendum process and its outcome remains to be seen.

With many French politicians preferring that the French South Pacific Island territory remain part of France, Macron’s handling of the referendum process and its outcome remains to be seen.

Emmanuel Macron speaking at LeWeb 2014. After New Caledonia’s second polling, Macron secured a slight majority of 52.57 percent against Le Pen’s 47.43 percent. Credit: Official LeWeb Photos/Flickr: CC BY 2.0

Canberra, Australia: The political future of New Caledonia, a French South Pacific Island territory of 273,000 people, is a profound question mark as a referendum on independence rapidly approaches next year. Equally, how the newly elected French government, led by Emmanuel Macron, will perform as arbiter of the challenging process in the months ahead is a relative unknown.

Independence aspirations have risen in New Caledonia since the 1980s when violent unrest signalled growing agitation for UN Decolonisation List in 1986.

Less than 1% of France’s population lives in the Pacific territories, but the state’s reluctance to severe ties with its overseas territories is due to ideological and strategic factors.

Michael Forrest, foreign affairs secretary for FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), proclaimed in a November interview with the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) that Kanaks “want to be free and integrated into the political, social and economic environment of the Pacific.”

“It will be a very complex issue to deal with, but I think that Macron will respect the result of the referendum, whatever it is,” Paul Soyez, adjunct professor at France’s Paris IV-Sorbonne University and researcher on international relations at the University of Melbourne, Australia, told IPS.

Thirty-nine-year-old Macron, a former investment banker and economic minister in the previous socialist government led by François Hollande, won the second round of voting in presidential elections on May 7 against Marine Le Pen, former leader of the National Front. He galvanised popular support for his centrist independent movement, En Marche! (On the Move!), with a strident call for national revival through economic reform and growth, social unity and strengthening of the EU.

“Macron will maintain the French state’s conciliatory approach to the referendum, like left-wing politicians have done since 1988. His aim will be to secure a calm referendum for the sake of New Caledonia, and for his own sake. I think that his methods can help to avoid violent tensions in New Caledonia next year,” Soyez predicts.

Yet the territory’s political future was not a key campaign issue as a pressing domestic agenda, including high unemployment and concerns about terrorism and immigration, drove candidates’ rhetoric.

And none of the presidential candidates ventured to New Caledonia during campaigning, where voter abstention of 51% was very high. But, after the territory’s second polling, Macron secured a slight majority of 52.57% against Le Pen’s 47.43%. In Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia, 80% and 58% of voters respectively chose Macron, giving him an overall lead across the French Pacific.

French politicians across the ideological spectrum, including socialist Francois Hollande, centre-right Republican François Fillon and far-right Marine Le Pen, have stated publicly that, while respecting the referendum process, they prefer that New Caledonia remains part of France.

Less than 1% of France’s population lives in the Pacific territories, but the state’s reluctance to severe ties with its overseas territories is due to ideological and strategic factors, according to Soyez.

“Firstly, France constitutes an ‘indivisible’ republic. Therefore, as long as the majority of the population want to remain French, France has the duty to maintain its sovereignty. This is extremely important in the French psyche,” he explained.

As well, “French overseas territories enable France to project its military force all around the world, which is very important when France is leading several operations. France’s presence in the South Pacific provides Paris with the second largest Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the world, many natural resources and influence in its regional institutions.”

Macron also shared his hope for the status quo in an interview with Noumea’s media in May, while advocating that the causes of local grievances be tackled, such as unemployment of 14.9%. But Soyez believes that “Macron, like a majority of French citizens, believes that a solution can be found between the status quo and independence, if the local communities want to find a way to compromise.”

While the new president has a long list of domestic issues to progress, disputes over the referendum electoral roll demand resolution as well.

“One of the major challenges for us is to include what we estimate to be between 20,000-25,000 local indigenous Kanak people who are not on the referendum electoral list. This list is the responsibility of the French government,” Forrest said to local media.

An estimated 84,000 Kanaks and 71,000 non-indigenous citizens are entitled to vote in the referendum.

New Caledonia’s first referendum on independence was held in 1987, but a major Kanak boycott resulted in a pro-France outcome. Further negotiations with France led to a second referendum being provided for in the 1998 Noumea Accord, which also pledged to address indigenous disparity and the partial devolution of powers.

Two decades later the Kanak population still struggles with hardship and low development outcomes. New Caledonia has a high GDP per capita in the region of 39,391 dollars. But research reveals that the employment gap has changed little since the end of the 1990s. In 2009, the unemployment rate for Kanaks was still high at 26%, compared to 7% for non-Kanaks.

Anger by indigenous youths during clashes with police near Noumea in recent months is a sign that inequality remains a burning issue.

Yet an opinion poll conducted by New Caledonian television in April points to a loyalist lead with 54% of eligible referendum voters opposed to independence, about 25% in favour and 21% undecided. Concerns about a French ‘exit’ include a possible decline in the economy and living standards. The French government currently injects about 1.1 billion dollars into the island territory every year to fund education and development, social security and the public service.

Another crucial hurdle for the pro-independence lobby is that, after decades of debate about self-determination, there remains a lack of consensus about a vision of nationhood which satisfies people on all sides of the political divide.

(IPS)

And the Winner in the French Presidential Election Is… Populism

A survey shows that candidates who exploited populism somehow during the first round of the French presidential election captured about half of the vote.

A survey shows that candidates who exploited populism in one way or the other during the first round of the French presidential election captured about half of the vote.

National Front party leader, Marine Le Pen, has been campaigning on a populist agenda. Credit: Charles Platiau/Reuters

The first round of the 2017 presidential election highlighted a transformation in the French political landscape. This is clear from the weak performance of candidates from the two major parties that have dominated the political scene in France since 1981.

The votes cast for both François Fillon (Republican Party) and Benoît Hamon (Socialist Party) added up to just 26% of the total. The remaining 74% went to candidates who did not participate in the primaries and who have not dominated parliamentary life for decades.

But the greatest victor of the presidential election is clearly populism. Together, candidates who in some way exploited populist ideology captured about half the vote.

Populism relies on the principle that “the people” (a vague concept that’s now back in the political discourse) know what is best for themselves and that, as a consequence, they do not need political representatives.

Thus, argue sovereignists, nationalists and a few half-baked intellectuals, the oligarchic divide between the people and the elites is intolerable. And the European project is reprehensible.

In the same vein, scientific or intellectual study of society is considered unnecessary. Throughout the campaign, polls were frequently called inaccurate and cited as instruments of media manipulation – an assertion disproved on election night.

Populism takes root

If we add up the votes for populist candidates in the first round – that is, all votes except those for conservative Fillon, socialist Hamon and centrist Emmanuel Macron – they make up 50% of what was counted on the night of April 23.

This is in line with a French electoral survey carried out April 16-20 by Cevipof, demonstrating the extent to which populist ideas have taken root in the French collective imagination.

The survey included five statements that allowed us to measure populist attitudes among those surveyed:

Parliamentarians in the National Assembly should follow the will of the people
The most important political decisions should be taken by the people, not by politicians
The political differences between ordinary citizens and elites are greater than those between ordinary citizens themselves
I would rather be represented by an ordinary citizen than a professional politician
Politicians talk too much and do not take enough action.

Each of these statements garnered various rates of positive answers (four or five on a scale from zero to five). The vast majority of people agreed with the statement that parliamentarians should follow the will of the people and that politicians talk too much and do not take enough action (80% and 84%, respectively).

But while 71% of respondents agreed with the statement that political differences between ordinary citizens and elites are greater than those between ordinary citizens themselves, just 57% thought that the most important decisions should be made by the people rather than politicians. And 51% would prefer to be represented by an ordinary citizen rather than a professional politician.

These lines of inquiry may appear questionable because, for example, of their use of rather vague concepts such as “ordinary citizen”. But they help us identify strong criticism of political representation, and the professionalisation of elected representatives.

If we establish a populism index on this basis, counting the number of positive answers and using a scale from zero to five, we can see that the average level of agreement with these statements is very high: 69% of respondents are at level four or above on the index.

We can then split the index, as this simplifies the calculations and allows us to distinguish the 55% of respondents with a high level of support for populism from the 45% with a weak to moderate level.

Populism affects even the most highly educated

According to our survey, the average level of support for populism did not correlate with the respondent’s age, employment status (working, unemployed, retired, or self-employed), or whether their career is in the public or private sector. But it did depend of their level of education.

Among those who ended their studies after primary or secondary school, the level of support for populism is at 63%. And it drops to 40% among those who completed their tertiary education at one of France’s prestigious grandes écoles.

This correlation is also evident when looking at socio-professional categories. While 44% of professionals and entrepreneurs and 45% of executives can be categorised as highly populist, this percentage rises to 58% for private and public sector employees and to 64% for skilled labourers in the private sector.

Overall, the rate of populism’s appeal is at 59% for low-income families, 54% for median-income families and 44% for high-income families. This demonstrates that the feeling of unease with the state of democracy goes far beyond the working class.

The difference lies in the extent to which each category rejects professional politics: 38% of professionals and managers (as compared to 56% of labourers) would still prefer to be represented by ordinary citizens than professional elected representatives.

Prominent political figures against the populists

As shown in table 2, the level of support for populism varies significantly for each electoral base and remains associated with each candidate’s level of support for the European Union. Among supporters of far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France Insoumise), it is similar to that found among supporters of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen (National Front).

Conversely, supporters of the candidates from the movement En Marche (Macron), the Republicans and the Socialist Party – themselves fairly representative of French elites – are relatively less eager to challenge the idea of elected representatives and representative democracy.

As for minor candidates, their supporters – from the left and the right – are even more comfortable with populism. This is perhaps the basis for the argument that France has moved beyond the left-right divide, even though those in each camp still have nothing in common when it comes to economic or societal values.

This confrontation between populists and elites, which is embodied in the May 7 Macron-Le Pen run-off, revives the historical opposition between advocates for direct democracy and supporters of a liberal democracy that allows representatives enough freedom to take action during their mandate.

It also reveals very different perceptions of political life. Anger plays a greater role in the political choices of populists: 62% of highly populist voters (versus 41% of less populist voters) say they are angry at France’s current political situation.

This initial, rapid examination of the situation shows that the current French desire for political change is expressed by a blanket challenge to modern representative democracy. The model, born of the French and American revolutions, requires unconstrained mandates, competent elected representatives trained in the political profession, and a sharp separation between the public and private spheres.

First round presidential election results from France suggest that the question of this separation will hang heavily over the next five-year term.

Translated from the French by Alice Heathwood for Fast for Word.

Luc Rouban is director of research CNRS at Sciences Po – USPC

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Le Pen’s French Election Campaign Targets Far Left and Right

A poll suggested that some 52% of the far-left Melenchon supporters would back Macron in the run-off, 36% would abstain and only 12% would vote for Le Pen.

Marine Le Pen, French National Front political party leader, celebrates after early results in the first round of 2017 French presidential election, in Henin-Beaumont, France. Credit: Reuters/Charles Platiau

Paris: Warnings against the dangers of globalisation and terrorism and efforts to portray rival Emmanuel Macron as the establishment candidate will be at the heart of Marine Le Pen’s campaign for the May 7 French election run-off.

While very much aware that opinion polls give Le Pen no chance of winning, the National Front (FN) hit hard on those themes right at the start of the between-the-two-round campaign, seeking to attract disgruntled far-leftists and right-wingers.

A one-on-one against an ex-banker backed by politicians of all stripes wanting to form a dam against the FN gives Le Pen the perfect opportunity to boost her anti-establishment appeal, even if pollsters say that is not enough for her to win.

Her canvassing at a market in the unemployment-ridden small town of Rouvroy, in northern France, on Monday morning, saying the run-off would be a referendum against globalisation and slamming the “rotten” alliance of mainstream politicians against her, set the tone.

“I’m convinced a big majority of French are opposed to rampant globalisation,” Le Pen said, in between selfies, in a town where she got more than 40% of the votes on Sunday and far-leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, also a harsh critic of globalisation and the political mainstream, came second.

Le Pen’s closest aides were out and about on morning media shows pressing that point and saying that those who backed Melenchon were within reach for Le Pen.

“The left-right divide is something of the past and the new divide is between the globalists and the patriots,” Gaetan Dussausaye, the head of the FN Youths and a member of Le Pen’s campaign committee, told Reuters. “We saw that last night and it will be at the heart of the campaign between the two rounds.”

Le Pen won 21.3% of the votes on Sunday, behind Macron’s 24.01% and her campaign immediately sent an email to supporters urging them to spread social-media tailored messages on the “real Macron”.

“The real Macron is the establishment’s candidate,” one of those messages said.

A woman walks past official posters of candidates for the 2017 French presidential election. Credit: Reuters/Pascal Rossignol

Melenchon got 19.64% on Sunday and, though a fervent opponent of Le Pen for years, he has so far refused to say who he will back in the run-off. Le Pen’s anti-establishment, anti-globalisation chord could resonate with some of his voters.

At a bar in northern Paris, where Melenchon held his electoral night vigil, his supporters were split on the issue.

While some said they might back Le Pen, a Harris Interactive poll suggested they represented a minority: some 52% of Melenchon supporters would back Macron in the run-off, 36% would abstain and only 12% would vote for Le Pen.

“Not enough”?

Analysts said Le Pen might find more support amid right-wing voters worried by security issues and Europe’s open borders, who backed either conservative Francois Fillon or nationalist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan in the first round and might balk at backing Macron, a moderate centrist.

“I fought against [Socialist President Francois] Hollande for five years and cannot back his heir,” said 28-year-old parliamentary assistant Eric de La Fouchardiere, referring to Macron, a former adviser and minister of Hollande’s, at an election night gathering on Sunday.

He would not heed Fillon’s call to back Macron and would either vote Le Pen or spoil his ballot, he said.

A Harris Interactive poll showed 47% of Fillon’s voters would back Macron while 23% would vote for Le Pen.

While Le Pen failed to make her trademark themes of immigration, security and terrorism the core of the first campaign, the FN’s Dussausaye said it would be an important theme between the two rounds.

Hitting that angle in Rouvroy, Le Pen, after urging “all patriots” on Sunday to rally behind her, on Monday handed out leaflets in which she pledged to “eradicate Islamist terrorism” and expel “Islamist foreigners”.

“But it just doesn’t seem enough to win,” said Gilles Ivaldi, a Nice University researcher into the FN, in comments echoed by pollsters.

Opinion polls on Monday saw Macron attracting at least 60% of the votes on May 7.

Sylvain Crepon, an FN specialist at Tours university, says Le Pen cannot bridge the gap with Macron this time, but pressing those themes is vital for the party’s future and its role in the reorganising of a political landscape shaken by a campaign which has seen both the major left-wing and right-wing parties tumble.

“They’re preparing for afterwards, for 2022,” Crepon said, referring to the next presidential election.

“Macron is paradoxically the best opponent for Le Pen. Not in terms of second round score, because he was the one [out of the first round contenders] seen beating her most heavily, but because, since everybody is backing him in France and in Europe, she can bill him as the establishment, globalisation candidate and present herself as the best alternative,” he said.

(Reuters)

Macron and Le Pen to Face off for French Presidency

After a historic battle, we now know that one of two people will be the next president of France.

Supporters of Emmanuel Macron, head of the political movement En Marche !, or Onwards !, and candidate for the 2017 French presidential election, react after early results in the first round of 2017 French presidential election in Paris, France, April 23, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Benoit Tessier

In the end, the polls were right. Emmanuel Macron will go into the second round of the French presidential election against Marine Le Pen. For a while it seemed as though a dead heat were on the cards but, in the end, Macron took first place, with nearly 24%, ahead of Le Pen at just under 22%.

Republican candidate François Fillon and far-left contender Jean-Luc Mélenchon followed close behind, with Socialist Benoît Hamon trailing badly.

Despite coming second, for Le Pen and her supporters, the score is a disappointment. For so long, she was touted for first place and predicted a score as high as 27%. Even on the eve of the vote, some pundits were predicting the possibility of a score of 30%. Her score is well behind the 28% the Front National scored in the regional elections in December 2015. Above all, it reflects Le Pen’s failure to make the key aspects of her programme count in the campaign. She was strangely muted in the TV debates and now it shows.

The disappointment was clear on Le Pen’s face when she made her first TV appearance at a little after nine on the night of the vote. At her campaign head quarters, by 10 o’clock they’d turned off the TV screens and half her supporters had gone home while others were enjoying the disco.

Thierry Legier (L), the bodyguard of Marine Le Pen, French National Front (FN) political party leader and candidate for French 2017 presidential election, stand near as she visits the Salon des Entrepreneurs (Entrepreneurship fair) in Paris, France, February 1, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Benoit Tessier/File Photo

All the polls that have run a Le Pen/Macron scenario for the second round have suggested a 60/40 split in favour of Macron. Le Pen will hope for better, of course, but while she has to believe she can win on May 7, it’s a very long shot.

The final result will have an impact on Le Pen and the future direction of the Front National. She is not in danger of being replaced if she loses; there is no alternative leader for the time being. But the strategy and the programme, largely devised by her acolyte Florian Philippot, will be put under the spotlight.

Her voters are loyal, and Le Pen will hope to secure a proportion of Fillon’s voters as well as those Mélenchon followers who cannot countenance supporting Macron. But with so many other candidates urging their followers to now back Macron, she has a lot of ground to cover in a very short space of time.

Francois Fillon, former French prime minister, member of the Republicans political party and 2017 presidential election candidate of the French centre-right reacts after delivering a speech in front of small business leaders in Puteaux, France, March 6, 2017. Credit: Reuters

Fillon gracious in defeat

Despite Mélenchon’s late rally, it seems that Fillon is the third man in this race. At 8:45 pm, he appeared at his campaign headquarters to deliver a remarkably dignified speech in which he accepted his defeat and called, without hesitation, for his supporters to vote for Macron in the second round.

Not all of them will. Le Pen will hope that the right wing Catholic vote will swing to her rather than Macron, for example. Nevertheless, with Fillon’s defeat, most of the Republican heavyweights came out in favour of Macron. It may even be that, in due course, once the allegations against him are out of the way and show him to be innocent, Fillon might even foresee a situation where he and other figures from the right might have a role to play between now and 2022.

While Fillon demonstrated both restraint and dignity, throughout the evening Mélenchon and his camp showed the opposite. They refused to accept the projections based on exit polls, even as they appeared to confirm the gap between Macron and Le Pen, and again Fillon and Mélenchon. This is the downside of Mélenchonite. After the fever reaches its high point, it inevitably leads to disappointment, not to say depression. In 2012, having thought he might come third, Mélenchon slipped to fourth, and by a distance. In the last fortnight of this campaign, Mélenchon and his supporters convinced themselves that they would be in the second round. Fly high, fall far.

But Mélenchon succeeded in one of his missions: to reduce Socialist candidate Benoît Hamon to fifth place and a crushing 6.5%. Hamon was out of the blocks first, by 8:15 pm, to call for his supporters to vote Macron. By nine, his head quarters was empty, with only a handful of journalists hanging around.

Emmanuel Macron, head of the political movement En Marche !, or Onwards !, and candidate for the 2017 French presidential election, visits the International Agricultural Show in Paris, France, March 1, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Regis Duvignau

Now, with the second round approaching on May 7, Le Pen will be hoping that Macron blunders. But until this point, he has avoided the obstacles thrown across his path, while Le Pen has failed to make her key points count. Perhaps, just perhaps, now that Fillon and Mélenchon are out of the way, Le Pen will find a second wind, and more easily be able to define her programme. She may take back the initiative that has eluded her so far in this campaign. If she is going to win, she is going to have to do that in spades.

Paul Smith is an associate professor in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Nottingham.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Celebrations, Disappointment Mark Night of Political Theatre in France

Post the first round, France will decide between far-right candidate Le Len and centrist Macron in the second round of elections on May 7.

Supporters of Emmanuel Macron, head of the political movement En Marche!, or Onwards! and candidate for the 2017 French presidential election, celebrate after partial results in the first round of 2017 French presidential election, at the Parc des Expositions hall in Paris, France April 23, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Philippe Wojazer

Paris: Flag-waving supporters cheered French centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s accession to the second round of France’s presidential elections on Sunday night as downcast supporters of France’s two main traditional parties quietly slipped out of their near-empty headquarters.

In a packed Porte de Versailles conference hall on the edge of Paris, thousands of well-heeled young fans of the upstart centrist Macron – many of them students voting for the first time – clapped, chanted and hugged one another to loud hip-hop and disco music.

Across town, a few dozen supporters of Benoit Hamon, candidate of the defeated outgoing Socialist Party, left a cavernous conference centre in central Paris in total silence.

French and European flags lay on the floor as waiters closed a small bar where only soft drinks had been on offer.

The team running the campaign for Hamon, who had been expected to lose and scored his party’s lowest score in its modern history, had not bothered to order champagne.

As the first results appeared on huge television screens at 8 pm (1800 GMT), some of the supporters of conservative challenger Francois Fillon screamed and swore as they realised the fate of their champion.

A young woman member of Fillon’s election team burst into tears and left the large room that was by then mostly made up of journalists. The mood had grown heavier among supporters as the time of the results approached.

“If I were confident I wouldn’t be drinking Coke and I am drinking Coke here,” senator Roger Karoutchi of Fillon’s The Republicans party told reporters just before it became clear that Fillon was out of the running.

Some young conservatives, still in their “Equipe Fillon” T-shirts had sneaked into the Macron rally nearby to ask why people there had preferred Macron over their candidate.

“I came here more out of curiosity than out of a feeling of disappointment. Fillon has called on us to vote for Macron in the second round, so we wanted to hear his speech,” said 21-year old biotech student Thomas Joucla.

Le Pen’s victory party took place at the Francois Mitterrand sports centre in her flagship town of Henin-Beaumont, northern France. She was the only one of the main candidates to spend the evening outside the capital.

Roars of “Marine Presidente” went up there as the early projected results came through.

Supporters sang La Marseillaise over and over again. One woman repeatedly made the sign of the cross, shouting “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it, finally!”

“Tonight is party time,” said hairdresser Aurore Cappelle, as some 300 far-right supporters formed conga lines and local mayor Steeve Briois danced to “I love rock and roll”.

Backers of the far-left showman Jean-Luc Melenchon were also disappointed that not he, but Le Pen, will challenge Macron now for the presidency.

In a defiant and bitter atmosphere outside a sports bar in northern Paris, where Melenchon held his electoral night, dozens of his fans shouted chants of resistance.

Like Melenchon himself, many of them refused to say whether they would vote for Macron in order to keep Le Pen from winning – a pledge made by both Fillon and Hamon.

Thirty-seven year-old Melenchon voter Fahrid, unemployed, said he would not go and vote in the second round on May 7.

“I am staying home. The game is over, Macron is president already. I have no job. Macron, Le Pen, all the same,” he said.

(Reuters)

Halting Europe’s Populist Wave, Macron Storms Into Runoff to Battle Le Penn

If Emmanuel Macron wins the French presidency, as polls predict, it could open the door to more ambitious reforms of the French economy and an elusive compromise with Germany on overhauling the troubled euro zone.

A Macron win could open the door to more ambitious reforms of the French economy and an elusive compromise with Germany on overhauling the troubled euro zone.

A combination picture shows portraits of the candidates who will run in the second round in the 2017 French presidential election, Emmanuel Macron (L), head of the political movement En Marche !, or Onwards !, and Marine Le Pen, French National Front (FN) political party leader. Pictures taken March 11, 2017 (R) and February 21, 2017 (L). Credit: Reuters/Christian Hartmann

Paris: The populist tsunami that slammed into Britain last year, before sweeping across the Atlantic to the US, may have faded on the shores of France on Sunday.

Despite a strong performance from far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the first round of France‘s presidential election, the bigger news was the success of Emmanuel Macron, an independent centrist who rode to victory with a counter-intuitive campaign that embraced globalisation, immigration and the European Union.

The polls suggest Macron will beat Le Pen soundly in the second round runoff on May 7. If he does, it could open the door to more ambitious reforms of the French economy and an elusive compromise with Germany on overhauling the troubled euro zone.

Just 39 years old and with only four years of political experience under his belt, Macron represents a generational change and a break from the left-right divide that has defined French politics for over half a century.

He would face formidable challenges as president. Nearly half of French voters opted for candidates on the extreme right and left of the political spectrum. These people are unlikely to embrace Macron’s liberal democratic vision, leaving France a deeply divided nation.

A president Macron could also struggle to cobble together a centrist majority in parliament after legislative elections in June.

But after Brexit and the election of US President Donald Trump, his first round victory – which comes after setbacks for far-right politicians in Austria, the Netherlands and Germany in recent months – shows that the political centre is holding in the heart of Europe.

“It looks as though populism is in retreat in Europe,” said Iain Begg of the London School of Economics.

Waving EU flags

Macron was the only candidate among the four frontrunners who embraced the idea of closer European integration during the campaign.

Le Pen and hard-left politician Jean-Luc Melenchon were openly hostile, floating the idea of a French exit from the EU. And conservative Francois Fillon, in the Gaullist tradition, spoke mainly about boosting France‘s influence in Europe.

At the post-election party at Porte de Versailles in the south of Paris, Macron supporters waved both French and EU flags. His victory was hailed from Brussels to Berlin on Sunday evening.

“Great for Europe” said German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel, who worked with Macron on ideas for reforming the European Union when both were economy ministers.

Central to Macron’s approach to Europe is his belief that France must reform its own economy in order to restore a level of trust with Germany. He wants to pursue a comprehensive deal with Berlin that includes reform of the euro zone and closer cooperation on defence and migration.

Macron travelled to Berlin twice this year, meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in March. His European advisers have said that if he wins the presidency, he will not wait until German elections in September to begin discussing a roadmap for European reform with the German government.

“We will go to them with a list of options,” Sylvie Goulard, a member of the European parliament and adviser to Macron who is seen as a possible foreign minister, told Reuters last month. “Now is the time to ask ourselves what is the right architecture.”

Macron is in favour of transforming Europe’s bailout fund, the ESM, into a full-blown European Monetary Fund, an idea that has supporters in Berlin. He is also in favour of a euro zone budget and finance minister, ideas that are less popular in Merkel’s entourage.

Europe’s economy is recovering after years of sluggish growth, but years of financial turmoil have exposed flaws in the bloc’s architecture that experts believe have left it vulnerable to future shocks.

Many express concern about how highly-indebted countries like Italy will cope when the European Central Bank begins pushing up interest rates and unwinding the bond-buying scheme that has kept borrowing costs artificially low.

“If Macron is elected there is an historic opportunity which may not come around again,” said Jeromin Zettelmeyer, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former top official in the German economy ministry.

“It will be very difficult for Germany not to engage with Macron on serious euro zone reform if he goes about this in the right way, reforming at home first and reassuring the Germans that Europe will not turn into a transfer union.”

Others are sceptical about whether Macron can convince the Germans to do a deal.

Christian Odendahl of the Centre for European Reform points to a lack of “intellectual convergence” between Berlin and Paris on what Europe really needs.

“In Berlin, there isn’t a great sense of urgency. They see this as a marathon, not a sprint. There is a preference for incremental improvements in Europe rather than bold new projects,” he said.

(Reuters)

What If Marine Le Pen Won the French Election? These Graphic Novels Decode a Possible Far-Right Future

In the French graphic-novel series ‘La Présidente’ the authors imagine what might happen if Marine Le Pen wins the presidential election.

In the French graphic-novel series La Présidente the authors imagine what might happen if Marine Le Pen wins the presidential election.

La Presidénte volume 3, The Wave. Credit: Les Arènes

The 2017 presidential campaign in France has been full of surprises, from François Hollande’s decision not to run for a second term to former prime minister Manuel Valls getting defeated in the Socialist Party primary; from the rise of insider-outsider Emmanuel Macron to the standout debate performance by far-left candidate Philippe Poutou; from François Fillon’s rise, fall and rise to Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s last-minute surge.

All the twists and turns have increased the uncertainty of an election that was up in the air from the start.

One thing that’s nearly certain is the presence of extreme-right populist Marine Le Pen among the top vote-getters. Her party, the Front National (FN), has gone from a pariah in the 1980’s to a major political force. While she and her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, have fallen short up to now, what would happen if she won in 2017?

The answer can perhaps be found in – of all places – a graphic-novel series. Created by writer François Durpaire and artist Farid Boudjellal, the first volume, La Présidente, was the hit of the 2015 rentrée (the beginning of the literary season). It was followed by the second volume, Totalitaire in 2016, and together they have sold more than 500,000 copies.

Now comes the third volume, titled La Vague (The Wave), with Durpaire and Boudjellal joined by Laurent Muller. Together the three books provide an enlightening view on the collective anxiety of French citizens as they face a 2017 presidential election whose outcome has never been less certain, and whose consequences for the country and Europe could be profound.

Durpaire, Muller and Boudjellal are well-versed in the mechanisms of power within the FN and have a superb knowledge of the media and political machinations in France. The originality of the series – a sort of retelling of the near future – is to apply a historical methodology and then to put the imagination into action.

An unprecedented explosion

In the first volume, the authors imagine that on May 7, 2017, Marine is elected president of the French Republic. Boudjellal’s sharply realistic graphic treatment and Durpaire’s insightful text allow the potential consequences of this election to unfold step by step. What seemed politically unimaginable in the second round of the 2002 presidential election – when Jean-Marie was soundly beaten by Jacques Chirac – is today only too possible. Every voter has to think about it and to do so, it’s essential to better understand what would happen if she were to win.

‘La Présidente’, volume 1. Credit: Les Arènes

The narrative is not a caricature: it applies to the letter the proposed programme of the FN, with direct extracts from official communications. La Présidente describes the first hundred days of Marine Le Pen at the Elysée palace, mobilising the political machinery and methods that the FN has employed through its history. The fiction was nourished by the advice of a team of political and economic experts, who make it possible to realistically explore the possible consequences of the FN’s taking power.

The graphic novel also extrapolates security propositions and technical advances already in place. In November 2015, former president Nicolas Sarkozy proposed electronic bracelets and house arrest for “S file” suspects, suspected of radicalisation, and in April 2016, Hollande authorised the use of facial-recognition software. France itself is still under an extended state of emergency after the November 2015 terrorist attacks – one that will last at least through the upcoming elections.

And so we see it all unfold in the graphic novels: France’s exit from the euro, mass deportations, legal preference for French citizens and widespread surveillance through new electronic and digital tools.

And if the Front National wins again?

‘La Présidente’, volume 2, ‘Totalitaire’. Credit: Les Arènes

In volume 2, Totalitaire, we’re at the end of Marine’s first term in office, in 2022. When the new campaign opens, a surprise candidate emerges from civil society around whom resistance begins to organise. The new candidate is polling higher than the current president, but is a fair election even a possibility? And what of Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, niece of Marine Le Pen and a political power in her own right?

By this point, technology offers an unprecedented capacity for monitoring and control – integrated chips in connected objects, robots, geo-location and automated surveillance of all communications. We are far beyond Orwell’s 1984, and the idea of France as a totalitarian country isn’t so far-fetched.

In a televised debate with former prime minister Manuel Valls in 2022, portrayed in the graphic novel, Marine says: “You speak to me of responsibility, you who were in favour of passing laws. Me, I apply them.” The events then accelerate on a global scale, with a new US president and dizzying range of geopolitical consequences. In Paris, Berlin and Madrid, new alignments emerge, even as the French president oversees the education of “a new citizen”.

And when the time comes for the election, darkness wins again: the surprise candidate is imprisoned and Marion Maréchal–Le Pen is elected president after a single term by Marine.

Dark thriller

The third volume, La Vague, released at the end of March, unleashes a scenario worthy of the darkest thrillers. At this point, France will have struggled through two five-year terms under the FN. There is resistance, but also unquestioning support. With an alliance between Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Le Pen, is there any chance that democracy can make a comeback?

One way to read this science-fiction graphic novel is as an explicit criticism of the totalitarianism that could result were the FN to take power in May 2017 and the rise of nationalist politicians around the world. It also announces the end of a generation of leaders that has governed in a short-sighted way, as well as – and this is the reading I choose – the failure of a system where insiders reserve all the power and benefits for themselves, while leaving no place for the civility and mutual respect that are the very foundation of politics.

La Vague, La Présidente and Totalitaire are published by Les Arènes, Paris, France.

Beatrice Mabilon-Bonfils is a sociology professor at the University de Cergy-Pontoise.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Looking Back on Six Months of the French Presidential Election

as France votes on Sunday here is a timeline of the main events that have seen veteran politicians drop out of the election race one after the other.

The eleven French presidential election candidates take part in a special political television show entitled “15min to Convince” at the studios of French Television channel France 2 in Saint-Cloud, near Paris, April 20, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Martin Bureau/Pool/Files

Paris: French voters go to the polls on April 23 and May 7 to vote for a new president, after a six-month-long campaign like no other.

Here is a timeline of the main events that have seen veteran politicians drop out of the race one after the other:

November 16, 2016 : Former economy minister Emmanuel Macron, an independent centrist, launches his bid for the French presidency.

November 20, 2016 : Voters unexpectedly kick ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy out of the centre-right primary ballot in its first round.

November 27, 2016 : Former prime minister Francois Fillon wins the centre-right primaries’ second-round and becomes his camp’s candidate, beating favourite Alain Juppe, whom opinion polls had seen as France’s next president.

December 1, 2016 : Socialist President Francois Hollande announces he will not seek a second term, the first time since France’s fifth Republic was created in 1958 that an incumbent president has not sought a second mandate.

January 25, 2017 : Prosecutors open a probe after investigative weekly Le Canard Enchaine reports that Fillon paid his wife Penelope hundreds of thousands of euros as his parliamentary assistant for work it says she did not do. Fillon denies wrongdoing.

January 29, 2017 : Left-winger Benoit Hamon wins the Socialist primaries, beating ex-prime minister Manuel Valls, who had for weeks been the favourite to win his camp’s backing.

February 1, 2017 : Macron overtakes Fillon in opinion polls, with the latter damaged by the fake jobs allegations. Macron is seen qualifying for the second round alongside far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen and winning that run-off.

February 5, 2017 : Le Pen kicks off her election campaign with a pledge to protect voters against globalisation and hold a referendum on EU membership.

February 22, 2017 : Le Pen’s chief of staff is put under formal investigation over the alleged misuse of EU funds to pay parliamentary assistants.

March 14, 2017 : Magistrates put Fillon under formal investigation on suspicion of embezzling state funds, a first for a presidential candidate in France.

March 18, 2017 : Eleven candidates get the go-ahead to run in the election.

March 20, 2017 : Macron was seen as the most convincing in a televised debate among the five top candidates, an opinion poll showed, helping him consolidate his front-runner status.

April 4, 2017 : Firebrand leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon was found the most convincing performer by viewers of a televised debate among the 11 candidates, a snap poll showed, with Macron in second place.

April 7, 2017 : The presidential race is tightening in its final weeks with Melenchon and Fillon narrowing the gap on long-time front-runners Macron and Le Pen, opinion polls show. They still show Macron winning the election.

April 23, 2017 : First round of the presidential election goes ahead. Polling stations open at 8 am (0600 GMT) and the last ones close at 8 pm.

France Votes in Crucial Polls after Bitterly Fought Campaign

The outcome will be anxiously monitored around the world as a sign of whether the populist tide that saw the Brexit and Trump’s election is still rising.

A photo illustration shows a French voter card in front of pictures of the candidates for the French presidential election, April 22, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Pascal Rossignol

Paris: France goes to the polls on Sunday for the first round of a bitterly fought presidential election, crucial to the future of Europe and a closely-watched test of voters’ anger with the political establishment.

Nearly 47 million voters will decide, under tight security, whether to back a pro-EU centrist newcomer, a scandal-ridden veteran conservative who wants to slash public spending, a far-left eurosceptic admirer of Fidel Castro or appoint France‘s first woman president, to shut borders and ditch the euro.

The outcome will be anxiously monitored around the world as a sign of whether the populist tide that saw UK vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s election in the US is still rising, or starting to ebb.

Emmanuel Macron, 39, a centrist ex-banker who set up his party just a year ago, is the opinion polls’ favourite to win the first round and beat far-right National Front chief Marine Le Pen in the two-person run-off on May 7.

For them to win the top two qualifying positions on Sunday would represent a seismic shift in the political landscape, as the second round would feature neither of the mainstream parties that have governed France for decades.

“It wouldn’t be the classic left vs right divide but two views of the world clashing,” said Ifop pollsters’ Jerome Fourquet. “Macron bills himself as the progressist versus conservatives, Le Pen as the patriot versus the globalists.”

But conservative Francois Fillon is making a bit of a comeback after being plagued for months by a fake jobs scandal, and leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon’s ratings have surged in recent weeks. Any two of the four is seen as having a chance to qualify for the run-off.

The seven other candidates, including the ruling Socialist party’s Benoit Hamon, two Trotskyists, three fringe nationalists and a former shepherd-turned-centrist lawmaker are lagging very far behind in opinion polls.

Months of campaigning has been dominated by scandals which have left many voters agonising over their choice. Some 20-30% might not vote and about 30% of those who plan to show up at the polling stations are unsure whom to vote for.

Adding uncertainty to France‘s most unpredictable election in decades, pollsters say they might not be able to give precise estimates of the outcome at 8 pm (1800 GMT) as usual, because small and medium-sized polling stations will be open one hour longer than in past elections.

Masked demonstrators hold a banner that reads “the night of barricades” as they take part in a protest march on the eve of the first round in the French presidential election, in Paris, France, April 22, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Vincent Kessler

‘Cheering madly’?

Bankers and brokers in Paris and far beyond are expected to be glued to their screens all evening. The possibility of a Le Pen-Melenchon run-off is not the most likely scenario but is one which alarms them.

While Macron wants to further beef up the euro zone, Le Pen has told supporters “the EU will die.” She wants to return to the Franc, re-denominate the country’s debt stock, tax imports and reject international treaties.

Melenchon also wants to radically overhaul the EU and hold a referendum on whether to leave the bloc.

Le Pen or Melenchon would struggle, in parliamentary elections in June, to win a majority to carry out such radical moves, but their growing popularity worries both investors and France‘s EU partners.

“It is no secret that we will not be cheering madly should Sunday‘s result produce a second round between Le Pen and Melenchon,” German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said, adding that the election posed a risk to the global economy.

Both US President Donald Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama have shown interest in the vote.

Obama spoke with Macron over the phone on Thursday, and Trump said the following day he expected the killing of a policeman by a suspected Islamist in Paris to boost Le Pen’s chances.

Riot police takes position during a protest march on the eve of the first round in the French presidential election, in Paris, France, April 22, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Vincent Kessler

Previous militant attacks, such as the November 2015 killings in Paris ahead of regional polls, did not appear to boost the votes of those espousing tougher national security.

If either Macron or Fillon were victorious, each would face challenges.

For Macron, a big question would be whether he could win a majority in parliament in June. Fillon, though likely to struggle less to get a majority, would likely be dogged by an embezzlement scandal, in which he denies wrongdoing.

Some 67,000 polling stations will open at 8 am, monitored by more than 50,000 police officers.

(Reuters)

The Right is Rising in Europe as France Goes to the Polls

With candidates from the extreme right and the socialist left in the fray, there are no clear indications who has the edge

A man looks at the campaign posters of the candidates for the French Presidential election starting on Sunday.(Credit: Reuters)

France has never witnessed such a configuration before: four candidates running neck and neck, breaking away from a pack of 11, all with a fairly even chance of success, scrapping for the two top places in the first round of the presidential poll on Sunday.

Unless one of them gets over 50% of the votes cast and romps home to victory this Sunday, the top dogs will fight it out on May 7. This election is just too close to call, as is the colour of France’s next parliament, which will be elected a few weeks later, on June 18.

Although opinion polls give Marine Le Pen, the Front National’s xenophobic, anti-Muslim extreme right leader, and the blue-eyed 39-year-old centrist and former boy-wonder Emmanuel Macron, a slight edge, they say the hard left’s literature-spouting Jean-Luc Melenchon and the conservative former prime minister François Fillon both stand a chance of inching into the second round run-off two weeks away.

Last Thursday’s terrorist attack in which a policeman and his attacker both died, has shifted the focus back from French malaise, poor economic performance and the country’s lost grandeur to the three I’s of Identity, Immigration and Islam. This might brighten the chances of the two major right wing candidates, Marine Le Pen and François Fillon in tomorrow’s first round, but it is unlikely to significantly increase their share of the popular vote. The Socialist Party’s official candidate Benoit Hamon, who is currently limping in fifth position is most likely to pay the price, since the Socialists are believed to be soft on crime and terrorism, although the State of Emergency now in force in France was introduced in November 2015 by the outgoing socialist President François Hollande. It has since been extended five times by parliament and runs beyond 2017.

Abstention will be a massive factor in this vote. Some 40% of France’s 46.9 million registered voters say they are still undecided about whom to choose. A high abstention rate will more likely affect the centrist and leftist candidates and work to the advantage of Le Pen, who has a strong committed following among those who see Islam both as fuelling terrorism and as a threat to their culture as well as many former communist or working class voters who feel dispossessed and marginalised by globalisation.

There is a lot at stake. This is a crucial year for Europe, with both France and Germany, Europe’s largest economies, going to the polls. The election of a hard left or extreme right candidate will very likely result in the dismantling of the European Union as we know it. Marine Le Pen has vowed to impose extremely harsh immigration quotas, take France out of the Euro and re-introduce the Franc, expel those suspected of radical Islamic leanings, reintroduce border controls and reserve jobs for French nationals. The extreme left’s Melenchon says he will crack down on financial markets, massively increase wages, debt and taxation and re-negotiate trade agreements. They have widely divergent views on immigration and Islam, with Le Pen slamming both while Melenchon pleads for greater humanism and tolerance, but both are pro-Russia, anti-American, anti-globalisation and anti-NATO. The extreme left and extreme right parallel lines in France, it appears, meet at infinity.

France has one of the strongest presidential regimes in the West with the head of state enjoying almost monarchical power, especially in areas such as defence and foreign policy. Parliament has limited powers and often acts as a rubber stamp or can be countered by ruling through ordinance. Even so, there have been three occasions in the history of the current Fifth Republic, founded in 1958, when voters shooed in a legislative majority in parliament that went against the President’s political grain. In 1986 and 1993, voters elected conservative legislatures under a Socialist President, François Mitterrand. A decade later, in 1997, they decided to administer the conservative president, Jacques Chirac, a dose of his own medicine by electing a socialist-majority parliament.

At least two of the serious four contenders do not have solid political machines backing them. So winning a parliamentary majority in the legislative polls in June could be a tricky affair leading to a complete re-composition of France’s political landscape.

Macron, who still looks disarmingly school boyish (he married his former school teacher, a woman 23 years his senior), does not have a powerful party base, having founded his political movement En Marche! (Onwards!) just last November. He has the support of several prominent centrist and conservative politicians but little by way of a grassroots organisation. Jean-Luc Melenchon is a Communist and Socialist renegade whose unabashed hard left rhetoric has beguiled many. Fillon has the Les Republicains conservatives backing him but the party is sharply divided with several members speaking out in favour of Macron.

The polls all indicate that not one of the four main contenders or the seven other “fringe” or marginal candidates will win over a quarter of the popular vote. So will it be a right versus right finish with Marine Le Pen pitted against Fillon? Will it be Le Pen against the hard left Melenchon? Or will the centrist Macron edge out the other three to force a centrist-extreme right face off? The polls appear to be reasonably certain that Marine Le Pen will be one of the two finalists on May 7. What then will she do for the legislatives in June? Will the conservative François Fillon, with his pious Catholic talk enter into a pact with the devil of the extreme right to win parliamentary seats?

If anyone is naïve enough to read the results of the recent Dutch elections as a rejection of the extreme right, they have another think coming. The real test of the rise and rise of the extreme right in Europe is staring everybody in the face right now in France.

Yes Geert Wilder did not become the Prime Minister of Holland. Yes Marc Rutter’s centre-right party won the most number of seats there and yes, the anti-Islam venom of the extreme right did not carry the day. But when one looks closely at the result, it is clear that the poisonous hate of the extreme right has made significant and dangerous inroads.

The extreme right is stronger than ever and here to stay. The French poll may yet reserve a couple of not so pleasant surprises in the most bizarre and unpredictable French election yet.