Macron loses absolute majority in parliament, initial projections show

PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron is on track to lose his absolute majority in the National Assembly and control of his reform agenda after early projections from four pollsters showed Sunday’s election yielded a hung parliament.

Macron’s centrist Ensemble! Polls showed the alliance would end up with the most seats, followed by the leftist Nupes bloc led by far-left veteran Jean-Luc Melenchon.

But the threshold for an outright majority is 289 seats in the lower house, and projections from all four pollsters showed Macron and his allies would fall short of that limit.

If confirmed, a parliament without an absolute majority would open a period of political uncertainty that would require a degree of power sharing between parties without experience in France in recent decades, or else political paralysis and possibly even repeat elections.

Rachida Dati of the conservative Les Republicanains called the results “a bitter failure” for Macron and said he should name a new prime minister.

“It is Emmanuel Macron’s arrogance, his contempt for the French …

that made him a minority president,” said Jordan Bardella, of Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National party.

In Macron’s camp, Gabriel Attal told TF1 TV: “No one has won”, while government spokeswoman Olivia Gregoire said the results were disappointing but noted the alliance still emerges as the largest group. in parliament.

REFORMS?

The former head of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand, lost his seat and the Minister of Health, Brigitte Bourguignon, was also not re-elected, in two big defeats for the Macron camp.

Separate forecasts from pollster Ifop, OpinionWay, Elabe and Ipsos showed Macron’s Ensemble alliance winning between 200 and 260 seats and Nupes securing between 149 and 200.

Macron’s ability to seek further reform of the euro zone’s second-largest economy would depend on his ability to rally moderates outside his alliance to the right and left behind his legislative agenda.

At the Nupes headquarters, people clapped, chanted and cheered as the first initial estimates came in.

In another major shift for French politics, Le Pen’s party could win as many as 100 seats, initial projections showed, its highest score on record.

The Les Republicanains party and their allies could also get up to 100, which could make them kings.

Macron, 44, became the first French president in two decades to win a second term in April, but he presides over a deeply disenchanted and divided country where support for populist parties on the right and left has grown.

‘DISORDER’?

He had called for a strong mandate during a campaign against the backdrop of a war in Europe’s eastern fringe that has cut food and energy supplies and spiked inflation, eroding household budgets.

“Nothing would be worse than adding French disorder to world disorder,” the president had said before the second round of voting.

Melenchon’s Nupes alliance campaigned to freeze the prices of essential goods, lower the retirement age, limit inheritances and ban companies that pay dividends from laying off workers. Melenchon also calls for disobedience towards the European Union.

Macron’s political allies present Melenchon as a “sinister agitator” who would destroy France. Christophe Castaner, one of the ruling party’s top lawmakers, derided his economic program as “full of Soviet-era clichés.”

“For me it is out of the question to vote for the absurd proposals of Melenchon: exile us from Europe and other nonsense like that. And they would be impossible to finance,” said retiree Joyce Villemur, who voted in Sevres, outside Paris.

Initial estimates indicated that Nupes had failed to win a governing majority, but had deprived Macron of one and would become the largest opposition bloc in the Assembly.

If Macron and his allies lose an outright majority by a wide margin, as initial projections suggest, they could seek an alliance with Les Republicanains or lead a minority government that will have to negotiate laws with other parties on a case-by-case basis. base.