Several hundred people were clamouring outside a theatre in Normandy for a glimpse of their hero when the political showman appeared at the top of a staircase to give them what they wanted. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a radical anti-capitalist, basked in cheers from the overflow crowd, then launched into an appeal for votes to help him take over France, reports The Times.
France has had enough of its “monarch president,” he said. “If the French people decide to give us a majority then we will govern . . . Destiny is in your hands.”
A foreigner passing the convention centre in Caen on Wednesday night might have been mystified. Emmanuel Macron, 44, was re-elected president six weeks ago with a healthy 59 per cent of the vote in the two-round poll. But his centrist alliance is unexpectedly in danger of losing its governing majority in a general election starting on Sunday.
The French usually give new presidents full control of parliament, but Macron’s victory was a re-election and the country remains in restive mood.
The threat has come from an insurgent offensive by Mélenchon, 70, a fiery orator who came a close third in the presidential race. The unapologetic hard-left figurehead has caught Macron by surprise by corralling the long-feuding Socialist, Communist and Greens parties into alliance behind his anti-system France Insoumise (France Unbowed) and stirring enthusiasm across the Left, from green-minded urbanites to the older working class. All shades were on hand at the Caen rally, from students and pony-tailed young men to retired trade unionists.
After seeing off Marine Le Pen, the hard nationalist runner-up for the presidency, Macron has been forced back into campaign mode to fend off what Mélenchon told the crowd was “the true third round” of the presidential election. Macron was not legitimately re-elected, Mélenchon said. “The majority of people who voted Macron did not want him. They voted against Le Pen.”
Mélenchon’s New Popular Ecologist and Social Union, known as Nupes, has in some polls overtaken Macron’s Ensemble bloc in voting intentions in the two-round parliamentary race. On 28 per cent compared with 27 per cent for Ensemble, according to a Sofres poll, it still remains unlikely to win a majority of the National Assembly’s 577 seats, but it is on course to rob Macron of the absolute majority he needs to push through his promised reforms.