From Paris
The presidential elections last April were a vacuum of debate and confrontation. The legislative consultation that begins in France on June 12 (first round) repeats the syndrome of the presidential elections won by President Emmanuel Macron: the electoral campaign has not sought out the voters, the ideas have been scarce, the debates and the non-existent models. Despite the fact that the campaign had an extension of two additional weeks with respect to the previous one, no carrier idea has been imposed.
Polarization
The polarization is too strong for the classic themes that once structured political discussions to be paramount. Public services, education, security have become peripheral lines of the electoral offer. This has repercussions on the little interest that this legislative referendum described as “atonal”, “boring, “without content” arouses in voters. Just 38 percent of French people say they pay attention to it. The collective uncertainties that were born with the pandemic and deepened for more than three months with the Russian invasion of Ukraine have not been a centralizing issue either.
However, everything has changed, including the political geometry of France. The country, electorally speaking, is not the same as it was just a month ago. Something fundamental has changed: the union of the leftist parties promoted by the person who came in third place in the presidential elections, the leader of the radical left of France Insumisa, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, upset the distribution of political forces and, therefore, the legislative perspectives.
After a micro-tragedy staged by socialists reluctant to join an alliance led by a former member of the Socialist Party further to the left than the caviar left of socialism, the PS agreed to be part of Nupes, the New Popular Ecological and Social Union made up of France Insumisa, the ecologists, the PS and the Communist Party.
second force
That pole that did not know how to form before the presidential elections to prevent the extreme right of Marine Le Pen passes to the second round appears today, according to previous polls, as the second political force in the country behind the coalition Together! that brings together the parties that support Emanuel Macron. The president’s main adversary is no longer Marine Le Pen but Jean-Luc Melenchon. Last April, as soon as the results of the presidential consultation were known, Mélenchon told his supporters: in the June legislative elections “elect me as Prime Minister.”
That boutade by Mélenchon that brought so many sarcasms could be, although distant, a reality. If Nupes wins a parliamentary majority, Macron would be forced to choose a prime minister from within the majority party.. The polls predict this Saturday, June 12, 28 percent for macronism and 27 percent for the rainbow on the left. Behind, in third position, is the extreme right of National Regrouping (19.5 percent) and then who was the right of government, the Republicans, 11 percent.
If these forecasts are projected in seats, the French president would obtain a comfortable majority (289): between 275 and 315 deputies for the presidential movement, between 155 and 195 for Nupes, while the Republicans and their allied parties would stay with a range that ranges between 35 and 60 deputies. The presidential elections drew an electoral France very different from the one that existed before. From now on, there are three blocks that distribute more than 75 percent of the voting intentions among themselves: the presidential coalition, Nupes and the extreme right.
One center, two extremes
There is a liberal social democratic center and two extremes, one on each side. 2017, Emmanuel Macron’s first election, was the year of the disappearance of the traditional proposals presented by the socialists and the conservatives. 2022, Macron’s re-election, is the year of the triangle with these three political movements competing for power and one of them, Nupes, as a novelty that was unthinkable just a month ago.
This strategic alliance is the great novelty of a political offer that, until Macron’s election in 2017, was always monopolized by the socialists and the right. Today, both have disappeared from the foreground. The Socialist Party (PS) and the Republicans were absorbed by macronismo or they rushed into the abysses of ineffectiveness and oblivion when they opted for insignificant proposals, very close to those of the extreme right (The Republicans) or liberalism (PS).
The PS candidate for the presidential elections, the current Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo obtained 1.7 percent of the vote while, on the right, Valerie Pecresse got 4.7. The common program of the united left and its 650 proposals have been seducing beyond expectations. That these allied lefts within Nupes could soon be the main force of the parliamentary opposition did not appear in any analysis of the evolution of the parties and the electorates.
Macron’s rival
This time, Macron does not have Marine Le Pen but Mélenchon on his heels. In the course of the last 100 years, this is the sixth time that the left has presented itself together (1924, 1936, 1945, 1981, 1997 and 2022). Your proposals today are in total opposition to the existing rules. Nupes proposes retirement at 60 years of age, a minimum salary of 1,500 euros per month, the inscription of green rules in the Constitution, the end of nuclear energy, price blockade, reestablishment of the tax on large fortunes, absolute control of rentals, the refoundation of the police or the legalization of marijuana.
Just a couple of years ago, such a program would have led its promoters to rank among the most impossible and insane nonsense. But today, the only thought that has prevailed until now, that idea that outside liberalism is chaos, has cracked under the pressure of its own contradictions and the disastrous consequences for societies and the planet. In the midst of confusion and the loss of quality of life brought about by liberalism, the left got involved again. The polls, this Sunday, can put you on the path of restoration and real transformation.
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