France's far right urges voters for clear majority in snap poll
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France has embarked on a frantically short election campaign on Monday, with President Emmanuel Macron's centrist alliance facing an uphill struggle to avoid another defeat at the hands of the far right.
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French far-right leader Marine Le Pen walks past a screen showing the president of the French far-right National Rally Jordan Bardella at the party election night headquarters (AP)
Jordan Bardella, the French far-right leader, encouraged voters on Tuesday to give his alliance a clear majority in snap elections on June 30 so that he may operate without interference as prime minister.
President Emmanuel Macron's group is presently lagging third in surveys behind the extreme right and a new left-wing alliance.
France began a frantically short election campaign on Monday, with President Emmanuel Macron's centrist alliance facing an uphill struggle to avoid another defeat at the hands of the far right.
Macron called the snap parliamentary polls three years early in a dramatic gamble to shake up French politics after the far right trounced his centrists in the EU elections. However, with less than two weeks before the vote, his alliance risks being squeezed by new coalitions forming on both the left and right.
Many in France remain baffled as to why Macron called an election just weeks before the country hosts the Olympics, risking the possibility of the far-right National Rally (RN) leading the government and 28-year-old Jordan Bardella becoming prime minister.
Bardella told CNews and Europe 1 radio he needed "an absolute majority," adding that he did not want to be the "president's assistant".
Bardella informed voters that they had a "historic opportunity to change the course of history," with surveys suggesting the far-right could be victorious.
According to an IFOP survey for the LCI TV station, the RN would receive 33% of the vote, the New Popular Front left-wing alliance 28%, and Macron's ruling centrists only 18%.
However, such an outcome would make it improbable that the RN will gain the 289 seats required for an absolute majority in the 577-seat National Assembly.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal urged people to support his party's candidates in the first round as the only "credible" alternative to keeping the far right and hard left out of power, citing that both would take France "straight to bankruptcy."
Former minister Francois Bayrou, a close friend of the president, told Sud Radio that the country faced two "menacing blocs" on each side of the political spectrum, citing that he will do all he can to combat what he referred to as "the plague and cholera."
A video of a voter addressing Attal during a campaign event on Monday with "you're okay, but you need to tell the president to keep his mouth shut" has gone viral.
Attal acknowledged that some French people were "angry" or "unhappy with the dissolution" of parliament but emphasized that Macron had been "elected until 2027."
Earlier on Sunday, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Le Journal du Dimanche that Macron's decision to call snap elections could plunge France into "chaos, from which it will have the greatest difficulty emerging."
"Giving the floor to the French people' to justify the dissolution is a curious argument since this is precisely what more than 25 million French people have just done at the polls," Sarkozy said, referring to Macron's decision.
"The risk is great [that] they confirm their anger rather than reverse it," he added.
