Nothing is lost until the game is over. And the game ends in France on July 7, in the second round of the legislative elections that, according to the results of the first round this Sunday, will win in Parliament (and potentially in the position of prime minister), for the first time, to the extreme right. But it is not a fatality and there are still seven days to avoid it. To achieve this, the left-wing alliance New Popular Front (NFP)—one of the big surprises of these legislative elections, by agreeing to participate in a single bloc and coming in second position with 28.5% of the vote—is beginning to take steps. Shortly after the vote estimates were known, this group has appealed to unite all the “republican” forces in the country and has committed to withdrawing its candidates in those constituencies where the candidate from another party has better chances of defeating the National Regrouping (RN) next Sunday. A request that has been extended to other parties not allied with Marine Le Pen’s party, but which has so far received a lukewarm response, despite the growing clamor in the streets.
“The only challenge next week is to prevent an absolute majority of the extreme right,” stressed Public Square MEP Raphaël Glucksmann. “Today there are no valid political labels, the only question is whether we are going to allow the extreme right, for the first time in our history, to conquer power through the polls,” urged the essayist, whose alliance with the Socialist Party (PS ) in the European elections he managed to come in third place and bordering on the Macronist list, a fact that boosted the leftist alliance shortly after Macron dissolved the National Assembly.
The commitment of the left, which is now emerging as the main bloc against Le Pen’s party, had already been outlined in the days leading up to the election by several leaders who had called for an agreement to “withdraw”, that is, where more than two candidates qualify for the second round, the one with the least chance of beating the RN must give up running, in order to favour the candidate, whatever party he may be from, who can beat the far-right candidate.
A call that several NFP leaders repeated in the iconic Place de la République in Paris, in a call to “stop the extreme right” that brought together thousands of people who raised slogans to combat the RN in the week remaining until the second round definitive.
“I’m terrified of the future, even though I know I’m privileged: I’m white, French, and educated. But we must stop the RN, it is a border that we promised not to cross,” said Maëlle, a 23-year-old history student who, along with her friend Diane, waved a banner with the slogan: “I will not go back to the closet.” “Let the fascists hide.” Neither Maëlle nor Diane are from the LGTBIQ community, but it was about, they explained, showing solidarity with all the people who feel threatened by an extreme right-wing government. “We must avoid repeating history. We cannot fall into defeatism,” they said.
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“Deep fear”
The “deep fear” of what could happen in France, especially “on a day-to-day basis”, also attracted Chantal, originally from the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe but resident in the French capital for two decades, to the central Parisian square. “I don’t recognise this France, I knew a France of solidarity, where there is violence but not so serious, nor so many divisions,” she lamented. The possible arrival of the RN, said this social worker with “deep sadness”, does not surprise her because “racism has been normalised and trivialised in recent years”, in which the game has been played at “dividing communities, prioritising some over others, as the RN does by condemning anti-Semitism, but not racism”.
The concern about a far-right government coming to power through the ballot box for the first time in French history has been a strong shock. Even the leader of the radical left-wing party La France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose position none of the other allies had dared to venture before his words, made it clear, as soon as the results were known, that he would join forces, without conditions, to “contain” the RN: “We will not allow the RN to win anywhere, so, in the hypothesis that it comes out on top and our candidate comes third, we will withdraw our candidacy,” he declared from the LFI headquarters shortly after the projections were known. The slogan, he stressed, is “clear and direct: not one vote, not one seat more for the RN.”
Manuel Bompard, former Mélenchon deputy and right-hand man, declared this Sunday: “Tonight is not for celebrating, but not for crying either, a week begins to fight constituency by constituency, house by house, voter by voter to inflict a defeat on the RN.”
“There will be no exceptions,” confirmed the secretary general of the PS, Olivier Faure. “No left-wing candidate will stand if there is a risk that this will lead to the election of a candidate from the extreme right,” he promised. “It is up to us to ensure that the extreme right cannot govern. They are at the gates of power and we must close them down,” he added.
Although it came second to the RN in the first round, the NFP is aware that a victory for the left is difficult, if not impossible. But this is not so much a question of that, no matter how many public demands some of its leaders make, but rather, as everyone stresses – in front of the cameras and also without microphones – of preventing the extreme right from achieving an absolute majority. And for this, all parties pointed out, a commitment from the left alone is not enough. A “republican” effort from all parties outside the sphere of the RN is required.
In this sense, the national secretary of the ecologists, Marine Tondelier, called for the “construction of a new republican front” with all the forces, including the Macronists and the traditional right. “It would be incomprehensible if some continue to avoid differentiating between the left and the extreme right,” she said, referring to the campaign of the Macronist camp that has spoken interchangeably of “extremes.”
“The Macronist majority has a great responsibility, because the neither-neither system no longer works.” [ni la extrema derecha ni la extrema derecha] “and it will have to take a position,” said the mayor of Nantes and number two of the party, Johanna Rolland, at the PS offices. “The historic moment demands clarity” and Macronism and Chirac’s right “should do the same,” she added in conversation with journalists. “They must say which side of history they are on.”
The response, however, was nuanced on Sunday. “Before the RN, it is time for a broad, clearly Democratic and Republican grouping for the second round,” said President Macron, without specifying, however, whether all the forces of the political arc outside the RN fit in there, especially the rebels whom he has described as “extremists”, equating them with the RN. Former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, leader of the Horizons party that is part of the Macronist Ensemble (Together) alliance, promised that his candidates will “desist” if they come in third place, but as long as the beneficiary is not from LFI. Similarly, the outgoing president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, of the presidential majority, also called to vote for the “most republican candidate, the one who shares our values” in the second round, but excluded “a certain number of candidates” of the left alliance. “It is undeniable that a certain number of members of La Francia Insumisa made clearly anti-Semitic comments and behaved in a clearly undignified manner in the National Assembly,” she declared on the TF1 network.
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