Macron’s Party and Allies Win Majority in French Parliamentary Elections
PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron of France
won a crucial stamp of approval on Sunday as voters gave him and his
allies a decisive majority in parliamentary elections, but a record-low
turnout cast a shadow on his victory, pointing to the hurdles he will face as he seeks to revive the country’s economy and confidence.
As
the polls closed at 8 p.m., pollsters projected that Mr. Macron’s
party, La République En Marche (The Republic on the Move) and its allies
had won at least 355 seats in the 577-member National Assembly, the
lower house of Parliament.
Mr. Macron, a relative political newcomer who was elected on May 7,
had called for a strong mandate to advance his legislative agenda,
including plans to loosen France’s restrictive labor laws. Voters swept
in many first-time candidates put forward by Mr. Macron’s party, including a record number of women and candidates of Arab or African ancestry.
For
the two mainstream parties, the outcome was a bleak repudiation: The
center-right Republicans were relegated to a distant second place, with
an estimated 125 members for its bloc in Parliament, while the
Socialists, who had a majority in the last election, saw their bloc
reduced to an estimated 49 seats. Parties on both the far left and the
far right won more seats than analysts had projected in the past week,
but fewer than what had been projected immediately after their strong
showings in the presidential election.
Mr.
Macron now “has all the power,” said Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, who
resigned on Sunday as head of the Socialist Party, which with its allies
won both the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2012, only to
see their popularity erode under the leadership of Mr. Macron’s
predecessor, François Hollande.
A
top Republican official, François Baroin, wished Mr. Macron “good luck”
but said his party would continue to be heard, as the largest
opposition party.
However,
the record-low turnout — perhaps as low as 40 to 45 percent, according
to early estimates — dimmed Mr. Macron’s victory and pointed to the
tentative, even ambivalent, view of many French citizens toward his promises to transform France.
The
leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, said
the abstention level was “crushing,” adding, “Our people have entered
into a form of civic general strike.”
He suggested that with such a high number of people not voting, the government was robbed of its claim to legitimacy.
A
majority of eligible voters did not show up, perhaps because they
thought Mr. Macron’s candidates did not need their support or, more
worryingly for Mr. Macron, because they were unwilling to give him their
endorsement. Many might have been tired of voting, having been called
to the polls not only for the two rounds of the presidential election
and then two rounds of voting for Parliament, but also for primary
elections on the left and the right ahead of the presidential election.
Nonetheless, the overall picture for Mr. Macron was a positive one.
“A year ago, no one could have imagined such a political renewal,” Prime Minister Édouard Philippe said, adding: “Abstention is never good news for democracy. The government interprets it as a strong obligation to succeed.”
Mr.
Macron, 39, has seemed like a golden child of Western liberal democracy
of late, with his stunning rise to power in little more than a year and
his seeming unerring sense of how to exercise it in his first weeks in
office.
However,
Sunday’s abstention rate suggests that he has yet to convince many
French voters that his ideas and legislative program will make their
lives better. The high abstention rate could make it easy for opponents
like Mr. Mélenchon to attack any efforts to enact fundamental changes in
France’s social contract with workers. Union-led street protests, a
longtime staple of French politics, could break out if Mr. Macron tries,
as he has promised, to fast-track part of his legislative program.
Still,
with at least an estimated 355 representatives elected on the ballot of
La République En Marche or its close ally, the Democratic Movement, Mr.
Macron could justifiably say that a majority of those who voted chose
his program of loosening France’s restrictive labor laws and making it
easier for businesses to hire and fire employees, and also reducing
worker protections with the goal of creating more jobs.
The
National Assembly, France’s lower and more powerful house of
Parliament, will lose little time getting to work and — if all unfolds
as Mr. Macron hopes — the steps will begin to change France.
Although
the Parliament will not vote on key measures in its first few weeks in
office, it will start discussing the measures later this summer, setting
the stage for rapid passage in the early fall, including the
contentious overhaul of France’s labor laws.
Also
on tap for completion in the next four months is a potentially
controversial codification in common law of some measures in the current
state of emergency, such as the ability to conduct house raids or place
people under house arrest without the prior authorization of a judge. A
much publicized — though less controversial — ethics law for
politicians is also expected.
In Sunday’s voting, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front party saw a precipitous drop in support,
winning an estimated four to eight seats, although Ms. Le Pen herself
won her race for a seat in a district of northern France. Just two
months ago in the immediate aftermath of the first round of the
presidential election, analysts had predicted that the party might
obtain more than 50 seats.
Mr.
Mélenchon, the far-left leader, won his seat in a district in the
Mediterranean port city of Marseille. His party was expected to take
only 20 to 30 seats, fewer than might have been expected after Mr.
Mélenchon’s strong showing in the presidential election, but enough to
challenge the Socialists for the status as the main left-wing opposition
party.
Only
the mainstream right party, the Republicans, and its allies managed to
maintain a significant presence in Parliament, with an estimated 90 to
130 seats.
