Voters on the French Left are already fed up. Fed up that their candidates did not make it through to the second round of the French presidential election on May 7th, and fed up about being told to vote for a candidate whom they despise - Emmanuel Macron – in order to stop the far right's Marine Le Pen from gaining power. As Lénaïg Bredoux reports, some voters on the Left say that they do not want to give centrist Macron a convincing mandate and that they will either not vote or will leave their ballot paper blank – unless the outcome looks too close to call.
The elimination of the candidates for the two main parties of government, centrist Emmanuel Macron coming top and the spectacular breakthrough by radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his Unbowed France movement constitute a political upheaval without precedent since 1958. After Sunday's first-round French presidential election vote, each political camp is now talking about a complete realignment of the political battlefield, and everything needs to be rebuilt. This is excellent news, argues Mediapart's editor François Bonnet.
As he prepares to leave office with the approach of the presidential elections, François Hollande is faced with the track-record of his term as head of state, and it is a vertiginous one argues Mediapart political commentator Hubert Huertas. He leaves behind him a Socialist Party in tatters and while handing his support to Emmanuel Macron, his former advisor and economy minister, who slammed the door in Hollande's face to run for the presidency on a centrist ticket.
For decades there has been a string of legal and economic initiatives by France aimed at improving the lot of its overseas territories. Yet as the current crisis in French Guiana shows, these measures have failed to have a noticeable impact on the 2.7 million French people who live in those regions. Julien Sartre reports on how an outdated model of development applied to these territories still shows no signs of being updated.
Former prime minister Manuel Valls, who resigned last December to run in the Socialist Party’s primary to choose its presidential candidate, has controversially refused to support the election campaign his leftist rival who won the contest, Benoît Hamon. But he has also refrained from backing maverick centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron, whose ideas are closer to his own. Mediapart political commentator Hubert Huertas argues here why Valls, whose ambition was to transform the French Socialist Party into something resembling the New Labour of Tony Blair, has ended up in a political dead end and left behind him a party in tatters.
For some years the European Union has been recommending that France carry out a series of policy initiatives in key areas such as public finances, pensions, unemployment benefit, workers' rights and even large-scale infrastructure projects such as digital development. Now, says Mediapart's Martine Orange, these policies have found a home – in centrist candidate Emmanuel Macrons's manifesto for the French presidency. In some cases they are almost word for word.
The official Socialist Party candidate in the French presidential election, Benoît Hamon, has been deserted by a section of the right wing of his own party who are opting to support the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron. The latest high-profile figures to support Macron are former Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë and defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, a close ally of President François Hollande. Some in Hamon's team say the defections make it easier for their candidate to make his pitch on the left. But as Stéphane Alliès and Lénaïg Bredoux report, his campaign is so far pretty much inaudible.
In 2012 the Left attracted its biggest shares of votes in the presidential election from the poorest sectors of society. But after François Hollande's presidency that support has dwindled. In the regional elections in 2015 this electorate turned instead towards the far-right Front National, headed by Marine Le Pen. The signs are that large numbers of France's poorest voters will also back Le Pen in the first round of the presidential election in April. Academic and Front National specialist Nonna Mayer analyses the figures.
The cover story of this week’s edition of Paris-Match is a portrait of Penelope Fillon, the British wife of the French conservative presidential candidate François Fillon. The article was clearly an attempt by François Fillon’s public relations team to dampen the scandal which has dented his campaign after it was revealed he paid his wife and two of his children out of parliamentary funds for work it is alleged was never carried out. But, writes Mediapart poltical analyst Hubert Huertas, the portrait of the central but mute character in the affair has in fact simply served to increase the mystery surrounding Penelope Fillon and the unease over her image as her husband’s “mute muse”.
While mired in a scandal over allegations that he provided his family with fake jobs paid out of public funds, French conservative party presidential election candidate François Fillon has insisted he will not step down. Fillon, once the front runner in the race and now knocked off his perch and into the back line of contenders, has become a largely inaudible candidate, his public appearances compromised by regular protests, while his statements denying any wrongdoing have been notable by the frequent contradictions of his explanations. But he still believes in his chances of election. Mediapart political analyst Hubert Huertas argues here why he might well be right.
