French politics: A turning point?
· Emmanuel Macron is the new French president. On May 7, he earned 66.1% of the votes against Marine Le Pen (33.9%).
· He is the youngest head of state since Napoleon Bonaparte.
· His election marks a new beginning in French politics: The presidency is Macron’s first mandate, and he wasn’t elected as the candidate of one of the two left-wing and right-wing traditional French parties.
A great relief ?
Macron’s election comes as a relief for a majority of French voters as well as European and foreign observers. However, it leaves the country in an unlikely position : the Socialist Party is in shambles as its candidate Benoît Hamon barely scored 6% in the election while the Republican Party is trying to re-organize itself. Many have taken the streets right after the results, as anticapitalist protesters promised to do once far-right candidate Le Pen had been beaten.
On the other hand, European reactions could mostly be summarized as a continent-wide sigh of relief. From the Spanish daily newspaper El Pais to the English Daily Telegraph, most contrast the global rise of far-right parties from the United Kingdom to the United States and France’s « new hope » (The Daily Telegraph, front page, May 8th).
Abstention on the rise
It’s the highest since 1969: abstention reached 25.4% of the electorate during the second round of the election. Equally dissatisfied with both French candidates, 4 million voters also decided to cast either a null or a blank ballot (not measured in the rate of abstention). Those skyrocketing figures justify that many French voters are currently taking the street to oppose what they feel is going to be presidency they will never come to agree with. They argue that Macron is a president that only a minority of French voters truly like, even though he won because the electorate was mostly scared of the far-right rising to power.
In the Hauts-de-France, a French region located north of Paris, I went as usual to vote in the small town called Gouvieux. Since the second round of the 2007 presidential elections when right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy won the popular vote, abstention has increased by four points of percentage.
Many of the voters I chatted with came because of the « civic duty » they felt. Some mentioned their daughter’s Moroccan boyfriend and framed the election as a matter of marital happiness for their family ; others like Marie, 67, and Pierre, 69, « have friends in Germany ; can you imagine trading Franks for Euros at the border ? No, that’s silly. »
France’s far-right Front National
Even that close to Paris, Gouvieux’s mayor Patrice Marchand cannot but mention the rise of Le Pen’s party in the departmental elections over the last few years. The National Front does not have any candidate at the municipal level here, but « voters lose it (and choose the Front) » in the departmental elections, confesses Marchand.
The typical profile of a National Front voter is a 30-ish-year-old man, either a worker or an employee with little education and low voting volatility. Le Pen scored in the North of France where a large part of the middle-class and lower-class jobs were related to closing industries, as well as in the East and the South-East.
What now ?
On June 11th and 18th, French voters will have to cast ballots again, this time to determine the composition of the Parliament. On May 11th, Macron will announce his choice of government, a highly awaited decision as it will orientate the vote of many undecided voters. Figures from of both left-wing and right-wing tradition (such as left-wing Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian or right-wing candidate Edouard Philippe) have been regularly mentioned by the French media as potential Ministers.
The French political scene is now reacting to this high level of uncertainty. Former socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls has announced his desire to join Macron’s party En Marche! but has not been welcomed warmly. Left-wing figures such as former Justice Minister Christiane Taubira and others have announced they will secede from the Socialist Party to create independent movements.
The Republican Party is currently trying to show a façade of unity. They just voted in favor of a common platform. Yet some of the early presidential contenders’ supporters (Bruno Le Maire’s and Alain Juppé’s) did not show up to the committee that voted the platform.
Far-right prominent deputy Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, Marine Le Pen’s niece, announced she would quit every elected position she holds to focus on her family and « work in the private sector ».
We are currently at what could become a turning point for the French fifth republic which began in 1958. The demise of both traditional parties on the left and on the right could open the field to a variety of smaller parties who, if elected to Parliament, would have to form coalitions to govern. France’s governability — or lack thereof — is now in the hands of the French citizens — at least, those who will decide to cast a ballot.
Agora is a world politics column by Marion Lefèvre published every Thursday in The Pitchwriter. Follow us to receive our articles in your inbox every day.
