Emmanuel Macron’s Electoral Poker Game Backfires
French President Macron’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly after the catastrophic showing of his majority in the European elections, and to hold elections three weeks later on June 30, created a huge shock in France (cf. SAS 24/24). While it is constitutional, it is a last ditch effort which has been used only a few times by governments seeking to gain new momentum after crushing defeats.
However, the shock did not create a new majority for the President, it provoked a split into two blocs, on the far right and on the far left, and a weakened center around Macron. On the right, the head of Les Républicains, what was formerly the party of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, joined the Rassemblement national, while the fear of a victory for the RN led the “left” parties to come together in a single “Popular Front”.
At this point, the polls predict a majority of 52% for the RN, which would leave Macron only two choices: a cohabitation government with RN President Jordan Bardella as Prime Minister or his own resignation. While Macron underestimated the results of his decision, there are troubling signs that he might have wanted to propel the RN into a coalition government, as Jacques Cheminade pointed out in a statement on his X Tweet account.
But can all this lead to any positive change for French citizens, who are faced with high inflation, low-paid jobs, high energy costs, high rates of delinquency due to a soaring drug traffic, and a war in Ukraine which is becoming a third world war? Unfortunately not. None of the parties call for peace negotiations in Ukraine, and all support arms deliveries. Jean-Luc Melenchon’s La France insoumise accepted, in exchange for creating the Popular Front with the Socialist Party’s neo-con Raphael Glucksman, to drop the demand for peace talks, and promise “unwavering support for the Ukrainian resistance”. Although both the far right and the far left propose some measures to improve the population’s purchasing power, such as less taxes on energy products, or to reform the retirement law, the RN continues to moot anti-immigrant measures, such as canceling a special state medical assistance program (AME) for illegal immigrants and changing France’s traditional jus soli (birthright citizenship), that favors integration, to the more segregationist jus sanguinis (citizenship by descent).
In this context, and because of the extremely short period of campaigning before the election, Jacques Cheminade’s Solidarity and Progress party decided to run three highly symbolic candidacies in voting districts for French expatriates, specifically focused on the need to stop a third world war and to join the Global South. Cheminade himself will run in the 11th district covering China, Russia and 49 countries of Asia, Eastern Europe and Oceania, Sebastian Patrimony in the 9th district covering Africa, and Odile Mojon-Cheminade, in the 10th district covering the Middle East. Three other campaigns are being run in mainland France. Their campaigns can be followed here.
