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FOLLOWING A RATHER underwhelming election campaign for the French presidency overshadowed first by the Covid-19 pandemic and then by the war in Ukraine – the centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron (La République en Marche) is once again facing off against the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen (Le Rassemblement National) in the second round of the French presidential election tomorrow.
This rematch is down to roughly similar first-round results. Macron and Le Pen obtained respectively nearly 27.8% and 23.2% of the vote, slightly higher than the 24% and 21.3% in 2017.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of La France Insoumise, was once again the only left-wing
candidate with a chance of making it to the second round, with 22% of the vote, up
from 19.6% in 2017.
Five years ago those first round results disrupted the traditional right-left party
duopoly that had reigned since Charles de Gaulle’s establishment of the Fifth
Republic in 1958.
This year the results have accelerated that trend.
Valérie Pécresse of the centre-right party Les Républicains, only obtained 4.8%.
Anne Hidalgo of the centre-left Parti socialiste, which held the presidency and
dominated the National Assembly five years ago, finished amongst the fringe
candidates on 1.7%, the lowest score in its party’s history.
In his victory speech five years ago, Emmanuel Macron promised to do everything in
his presidency to reduce the appeal of extremist parties, so that those who voted for
candidates such as Marine Le Pen would no longer have any reason to do.
Now he stands accused of putting her within touching distance of the presidency.
It is worth remembering that support for the far right has existed long before Macron’s presidency. His predecessor François Mitterrand facilitated the breakthrough of the far right into the political scene during his 1981-1988 presidency in order to weaken the traditional right-wing parties.
The 1988 presidential election gave Mitterrand a second term, but it also gave Jean-
Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen’s father, an unexpected high score of more than 14%
in the first round.
That said, it could be argued that Macron has engineered the duel with Le Pen -
throughout his mandate he has pursued a strategy of framing the political divide as a
binary contest between those who are outward-looking or “progressives” and those
who are inward-looking or “populists”/”nationalists”.
This approach was particularly apparent in the 2019 European election campaign
with Laurent Wauqiuez, then leader of Les Républicains, stating that Macron’s
proposals discuss “pro-Europeans and anti-Europeans, progressives and
nationalists, saviours and destroyers, with nothing in-between”.
However, Macron also appeared to muddy the waters between himself and Le Pen in veering more towards the right in the latter half of his presidency. He described post-colonial or anti-colonial discourse as a “form of self-hatred” that is used to fuel Islamist separatism.
His Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, accused Marine Le Pen of being “almost a little soft” in a televised debate. His party’s security bill restricted the publication of police images on social media and extended the use of surveillance drones, amid other measures.
Macron has managed to steer France through the pandemic, and improve the unemployment rate (currently 7.4%) in a country where a sluggish jobs market has plagued politicians on the left and right for decades. However, he has struggled with crises such as the Gilets Jaunes (‘yellow vests’) protests and pension reform strikes.
His tax policies, his vertical or “Jupiterian” approach, not helped by his short and rather aloof first round campaign, along with his occasional sarcastic remarks, have fostered an impression of a haughty, out-of-touch “president for the rich” and have made him the object of intense loathing among significant segments of the population.
The combative televised debate between the presidential finalists on Wednesday night did not dispel this negative impression. While a snap poll of voters suggested that 59% of viewers thought Macron had come out the winner, 50% also said that he had come across as arrogant.
Le Pen was narrowly considered to be more in tune with normal people’s concerns.
Since she took over the party from Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2011, her strategy has been to broaden its appeal to lower income voters. While she has retained the party’s core anti-immigrant positions, she has adopted a softer, smiling persona and focused more on the rising cost of living, economic hardship and declining public services in rural areas.
In a tweet on Thursday, she presented Macron’s domination of their debate as a sign of contempt, not just towards her but also towards the French people.
If Macron wins tomorrow, he will be the first president since Jacques Chirac to embark on a second term of office. (Nicolas Sarkozy was unsuccessful in 2012 and François Hollande opted to not seek re-election in 2017).
In 2002, the centre-right Chirac comfortably won re-election following a massive wave of protests against the first ever qualification of a far-right candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen, to the run-off.
The latest opinion polls show approximately 56:44 in favour of Macron.
However, this all depends on the floating voters, particularly those on the left who supported Mélanchon in the first round, and the potential level of abstention.
If he wins tomorrow, the parliamentary elections in June will be a major test, as he needs to renew his majority in order to pursue his reformist agenda, including a controversial overhaul of the pensions system.
Macron’s party still lacks a strong network of local elected officials across France after poor performances in the municipal, regional and departmental elections. Macron may have wiped out the main institutional parties in the first round of the election, but his own party could face a similar fate in the not too distant future.
Dr Maura Stewart is Lecturer in French at NUI Galway.
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Leo left health with 600,000 health waiting lists and FI rewarded him with top job. It Is now 700,000 and counting on Leo’s watch. Medical cards should be called waiting in agony and getting progressively worse cards. The poor are terrified of becoming sick in Leo’s “Republic of opportunity”. Any wonder hundreds of thousands are also on disability and invalidity when Leo, they would get up early if they finally got their appointments.
France … you get a colonoscopy within 6 weeks … even as Irish National ….
Irish Health System badly broken … needs massive transformation. It will take about 20 yrs due to the vested interests (unions / representative bodies). One Consultant experience – 8 procedures per day in UK, 6 procedures per day Irish private hospital, 4 procedures per day Irish public hospital … Irish health service productivity is abysmal leading to massive waiting lists.
So the answer is to outsource the lot to other EU countries. €19 Billion 5 yr contracts shared. Can select best from other health systems. Daft for a 4 million Irish population to try to run a full modern Health System with embedded legacy vested interests … clean sheet needed at this stage.
RyanMed …. way to go … fly us out and back in a few days.
I remember this case well. That man and his wife had the income to pay for health insurance and/or go private for tests, but they chose not to, because of their beliefs. They told how a private patient at the same time was seen in three days, when she had to wait months. I’m not saying that this is right, but what I am saying is that if it was my wife or child, I’d be scraping up every penny I could to pay for something that might be the difference between life and death. This is not a comfortable truth, but basically this woman was martyred. Again, of course it’s not right that so many have to wait for so long on waiting lists, but these people anyway had an alternative, and just chose not to take it.
@Jumperoo: no one should have to pay she was irish tax payer.
@Jumperoo: I absolutely totally agree with you, and I thought the same thing at the time, I’m not condoning the abysmal public health waiting lists…I work in a private hospital dealing directly with this, if it was one of my family I’d borrow the cash…this does NOT exonerate the public system and the chronic state it’s in.
Throwing more money at the hse won’t solve this problem.
We need a health minister with some balls who will stand up to unions and rid the hse of its bloated middle management and replace these people with more frontline staff and services.
It will cost use heavily at the start providing redundancy to these people but it’s the only way to solve the problem.
The unions will be baying for blood – they are the biggest hurdle this country has to face regarding progress and improving the health service.
@Theunpopularpopulist: read this case too. TBH it filled me with hope.
Condolences to the husband and his family but to see someone stand by their convictions because they believe in a better egalitarian society humbled me.
Must have frightened you and does most invertebrates.
@John Stafford: pardon? how does my opinion make me an invertebrate?
@John Stafford:
Were you by any chance intending that comment for Jumperoo?
@P.J. Nolan: I’d say he was. I know some people (like him, it appears) have a certain admiration for other people who are willing to die for their beliefs. That’s okay in some circumstances – so long as they’re not an ISIS suicide bomber, for instance! But what I’m saying is that if it was my wife, I’d shell out every penny I had instead of playing the waiting list lottery, if it might mean the difference between her living and dying. If that makes me an invertebrate…then sorry, and excuse me while I wriggle away across the floor…..
@Theunpopularpopulist: well said.
@Theunpopularpopulist: agreed unlikely you will get a health minister who can stand up to the unions, salary, expenses & pensions come first.
Its crazy and going private costs 1300 euro in a Waterford clinic for a 30 minute procedure. If we tackled medical costs , people might just chose to pay, right now its just a rip-off and not affordable.
@Dáithí Ó Raghallaigh: regarding the young girl from Langford she could go private to the clinic in London. There is an EU directive which says a citizen can get a procedure done in another EU country (providing it is not available in ones own country) and the government is obliged to refund the fees with in 30 days. There is a guy from wexford I think who did this last year. Got a credit union loan went to Austria for a bionic arm. 200000 it cost him and the hse refunded him on return. Ibthink it is the E126 scheme.
@Brendan Hughes: The CBD requires an upfront payment, whereas the treatment abroad scheme (E112) doesn’t. The HSE also seem to think that treatments qualifying under the TAS, do not qualify for reimbursement under the CBD which is mind boggling.
The Health System like all other public services in this country is a complete and utter disgrace!
But this is the price you pay for allowing a few people to run the country by nepotism, cronyism and other forms of corruption!
No Irish politician is trustworthy just a bunch of overpaid incompetent morons leeching of the tax payers hard earned money!
Despicable rotten criminals the whole lot of them!
@Matt Beaumont: Exactly, Just people would wake up to that fact instead of saying ff are bad or fg are bad etc, they are ALL rotten.
@iMoan Brutal: to the CORE
The fact that the government and the prior governments wished to invoke greater emphasis on the private sector of the health service is probably one of the most morally bankrupt things that they could do.
When is it right to leave the lives of people to a business who’s main priority is to make a profit. All people ,regardless of their income, deserve good, timely treatment and the front line public health-staff fair conditions to operate in. How much money you make should never be factor to whether a person may overcome an illness.
It is contrary to FFG neoliberal dogma that our public Health Service will ever be fit for purpose when so many private medical businesses need to profit from misery. The only way they will intervene is by using public money to pay for private facilities and further erode the public system.
This summer my 74 year old mother, who lost a lot of weight recently, was reffered to a gastroenterologist by her GP. The consultant saw her next day and decided to take her in the week after. He did the colonoscopy on Monday but they kept her in the hospital for three days for scans, x-rays etc. At the end she only needed antibiotics.
This was in Bulgaria, and my mother is an OAP and a public patient. All we paid was the equivalent of 15 euro addmission fee.
How is it possible it can’t be done here?
Sit in Beaumont for 30 minutes and you can see whats wrong and how to fix half the problem.
The place Is a death trap within itself. 90% of the hospital is filthy. You might come in with something minor , but you’ve a good chance of coming out with something more serious.The cleaning contractor needs to have its contract terminated, killing people by the day. The toilet on the bottom floor is the most disgusting toilets seen anywhere in Ireland.
Most of the rest of the problems are down to administration mismanagement.
Doctors and nurses do their very best, underpaid and overworked, but they do what they can. they work in chaos
Using the benefit of hindsight it would appear that the Irish state is and has been totally incompetent from day one. 100 years on. We celebrate our dysfunctional health system,corrupt political parties, corrupt garda force, corrupt defence force, corrupt religious orders, . The country is morally and ethically bankrupt. No accountability in public office or public service. Bankers walk free after condemning generations to pay off a bank bail out while suicide and homelessness sky rockets. Politicians bankers and the clergy have done untold damage to the ppl of this country. The unions aren’t much better . Everyone knows that reform and accountability are what’s required across all institutions of the state. Wake up it’s not going to happen.
You measure the annual volume coming into the public system for critical care.
You match it to an adequate volume of consultants. It will not match. The consultants are the main issue and the bottle neck. There is a wealth of money going to the private sector from health we don’t need more talk of smart healthcare. You remove add on populist care packages that are non critical care and eating money and achieving nothing. These programs must be terminated.
Offer an incentive sponsorship to any student achieving 550 > in leaving but they must commit to 10 years full public service or payback fees. Increase our doctor consultant and nurse capacity and reduce clerical to medical ratio and also reduce expenditure on private contracts for anything that is medical care. Pull all back office services under one large state contract spread over 3 preferred suppliers. No government will do this because there is serious money being made in contracts.The consultants will strike you must get buy in or introduce legislation for a temporary period of 5 years to get numbers up.
@Albert Brennerman: How are the consultants the main problem? I’m a junior doctor and I have seen consultants on wards at midnight, coming in from home at 3am and going straight with their shopping from Tesco’s to the hospital to treat people. You haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.
@Philip Kavanagh: So what’s the main problem? With 700.000 on waiting list, in a country with a population of 6 million, it seems like noone is actually getting treated.
@Philip Kavanagh: Yea I bet in their pj’s!!
My 3rd year running getting back to back urinary tract infections & on antibiotics almost every week & waiting 1.5 years to see a Gynaecologist & still no joy getting an apt.. waiting since March for a Urologist as apparently the waiting list isn’t as long… if i could afford to go private i would do it in a heartbeat but like many i don’t have the funds…
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