For more than 50 years, whenever France held a parliamentary election, voters would know the next morning which party would be in government and with what political agenda, reports The Guardian.
This time it is different. After Emmanuel Macron called a surprise snap election, and after the shortest campaign in modern history, French people delivered a spectacular rush of tactical voting to hold back a surge of far-right support. The resulting political landscape is divided and the outcome is complicated. Macron will take time to let the dust settle, his entourage has said.
An alliance of parties on the left, the New Popular Front, surprised pollsters by coming first with a strong result of 182 seats. But it fell significantly short of the absolute majority of 289 that would allow it to instantly form a government. This means the eurozone’s second largest economy, which is also the EU’s biggest military power, is entering a period of uncertainty with no clear roadmap, less than three weeks before it hosts the Olympic Games.
It could take weeks of dialogue and potential coalition-building to come up with a government and a prime minister. But France – with a powerful president and conflictual political system where parties reach vicious standoffs – does not have a recent tradition of building coalitions.
The French parliament is now roughly split into three blocs. In the lead is the New Popular Front, which blindsided Macron and the opposition when it managed to swiftly and efficiently unite four weeks ago to counter the far right. It is a rainbow grouping that in parliament will run from the firmly leftwing France Unbowed (LFI), which has the greatest number of seats at 74, to the Greens, who increased their seats to 28, through to the more centrist Socialist party, which significantly increased its seats to 59.
The broad left alliance’s deliberately strident policy manifesto included capping prices of essential goods such as fuel and food, raising the minimum wage, reversing Macron’s increase in the pension age to 64 and imposing a wealth tax.