Paris: French President Emmanuel Macron is on course for a landslide victory in parliamentary elections that will complete his overhaul of national politics as the first voters cast their ballots overseas on Saturday.
The election will see Macron’s 15-month-old party Republic on the Move (REM) and its allies win an overwhelming majority of 400-470 seats in the 577-seat national assembly, pollsters forecast.
The 39-year-old president was once a rank outsider for the presidency and was unknown to the French public until 2014 but looks set to achieve the previously unthinkable by securing a position of overwhelming power.
Since clinching victory in presidential elections on May 7, Macron has made a confident start to his term and his REM parliamentary candidates have been pulled along in his afterglow.
“You could take a goat and give it Macron’s endorsement and it would have good chance of being elected,” political analyst Christophe Barbier commented recently.
Around half of REM’s candidates are virtual unknowns who have never held political office before and are drawn from diverse fields of academia, business or local activism. They include a mathematician, a bullfighter and a former Rwandan orphan.
The other half are a mix of centrists and moderate left- and right-wingers drawn from France’s established parties including Macron’s ally MoDem. Such is Macron and REM’s domination that many opposition candidates have appealed to voters this week to elect them simply to make sure there is proper scrutiny and a counter-weight in the parliament.
“Looking for an opposition desperately,” said the frontpage of Le Parisian newspaper on Saturday. Former right-wing prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has urged voters to remember that “we are not electing an emperor”.
The voting began on Saturday in French overseas territories such as the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe or Martinique and on Sunday in mainland France. — AFP
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