PARIS: President Emmanuel Macron’s party, including untested novices, will be sweeping into the lower house of the French parliament, hogging a clear majority of seats after winning an overwhelming victory in Sunday’s elections and clinching the young leader’s hold on power.
Macron fulfilled his wish to disrupt politics as usual with new faces — including a farmer, a teacher and a math genius — and a new approach. But he may be getting more than he bargained for with the entry into parliament of loud voices from the ultra-left and far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen, both promising to fight his plans to overhaul French labor laws, one of the touchiest subjects in France.
“Through their vote, a wide majority of the French have chosen hope over anger,” said Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, reiterating his “total” determination to work on major reforms in the coming months.
A minor reshuffle of the Cabinet, an obligatory move after parliamentary elections, is expected this week, perhaps as soon as Monday.
The May 7 election of the 39-year-old Macron, himself untested, upended France’s political landscape, a phenomenon that continued with the parliamentary victory of a party that didn’t exist 14 months ago. With the June 27 start of the new session, the novices within the ranks of Macron’s Republic on the Move! party will be learning at high-speed. Half of the candidates in the running for his party were drawn from civilian life, and half were women.
Starting Monday, many will be taking their first official steps in the corridors of power, invited to pick up keys and the blue-white-red sashes warn by elected officials, and learn their way around.
Pollsters projected Republic on the Move! and its allies could take up to about 360 of the lower chamber’s 577 seats. Official partial results confirmed the trend, showing them with 327 seats, with 33 seats yet to be counted. The party will have far more than the 289 seats needed for an absolute majority to carry out Macron’s program.
Mainstream conservatives and their allies, the closest rivals, held their ground better than expected. The Interior Ministry counted the Republicans and allied candidates with 131 seats, with 33 seats still uncounted.
The Socialist Party, which dominated the outgoing Assembly, was flattened by the unpopularity of former President Francois Hollande. With its allies, it could get fewer than 50 seats, according to projections. The stinging reality of defeat pushed party leader Jean-Christophe Cambadelis, who lost in last week’s first-round vote, to resign — and blast the Macron system “with all the power.”
The Macron steamroller effect could be blunted with the entrance into parliament of some prickly opponents.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who rivaled him for the presidency, won a seat representing her northern bastion around Henin-Beaumont with more than 58 percent of the vote. Her National Front party was expected to place up to eight lawmakers in the lower chamber, compared to two lawmakers in the outgoing Assembly.
Le Pen said she would “fight with all necessary means the harmful projects of the government,” especially what she called Macron’s pro-European, pro-migrant policies.
“We are the only force of resistance to the dilution of France, of its social model and its identity,” Le Pen said, claiming the mainstream opposition parties were but “satellites” of the Macron power structure.
Le Pen’s nemesis, the ultra-left Jean-Luc Melenchon, vowed a “social coup d’etat,” saying Macron’s plans to reform labor laws amount to “destruction of the social order.” Unlike the National Front, Melenchon and his allies will have the required 15 lawmakers needed to form a group, a tool that provides extra funds, speaking time and other ways to weigh on policy.
Macron’s bid to ease hiring and firing through a set of measures aimed at bringing down the unemployment rate — now just below 10 percent — is the most sensitive plan on his agenda. Unions fear it would destroy workers’ protections.
Workers unions have already criticized the labor reform and the president’s decision to skirt normal procedure to pass changes that would short-circuit extended debate and nix amendments. The measures must, however, be ratified by parliament.
Macron also wants to clean up politics to change the image of a political class dominated by career politicians, peppered with corruption and losing credibility. The new government has already presented a draft bill with new restrictions on how lawmakers operated.
Disillusion with the political class is one reason given for what is likely to be a record low participation rate that could outdo the record low in last Sunday’s first round, measured at 43 percent — five points lower than last week.
Experts partly blamed voter fatigue following the May election of Macron, plus voter disappointment with politics.
Confusion also played a role, according to Frederic Dabi, of the IFOP polling firm. Macron’s party, which didn’t exist 14 months ago and offered novice candidates from civilian life, has drawn from left and right to fill its ranks, effectively blurring the traditional left-right political divide.
Macron’s party “vampirized” the left and right after his huge win in the presidential balloting, Dabi said on CNews TV.
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Philippe Sotto in Paris contributed to this report.
President Macron’s party dominates French parliamentary vote
President Macron’s party dominates French parliamentary vote
Russia warns French troops legitimate targets if they are sent to Ukraine
- French president Emmanuel Macron caused controversy in February by saying he could not rule out the deployment of ground troops in Ukraine in the future
MOSCOW: Russia warned France on Wednesday that if President Emmanuel Macron sent troops to Ukraine then they would be seen as legitimate targets by the Russian military.
Macron caused controversy in February by saying he could not rule out the deployment of ground troops in Ukraine in the future. The French leader warned that if Russia wins in Ukraine then Europe’s credibility will be reduced to zero.
“It is characteristic that Macron himself explains this rhetoric with the desire to create some kind of ‘strategic uncertainty’ for Russia,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters.
“We have to disappoint him — for us the situation looks more than certain,” Zakharova said.
“If the French appear in the conflict zone, they will inevitably become targets for the Russian armed forces. It seems to me that Paris already has proof of this.”
Zakharova said Russia was already seeing growing numbers of French nationals among those killed in Ukraine.
Russia said on Monday it would practice the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons as part of a military exercise after what the Moscow said were threats from France, Britain and the United States.
AstraZeneca says withdraws Covid vaccine ‘for commercial reasons’
LONDON: British drugmaker AstraZeneca said Wednesday that it has withdrawn its Covid vaccine Vaxzevria, one of the first produced in the pandemic, citing “commercial reasons” and a surplus of updated jabs.
“As multiple, variant Covid-19 vaccines have since been developed there is a surplus of available updated vaccines. This has led to a decline in demand for Vaxzevria, which is no longer being manufactured or supplied,” an AstraZeneca spokeperson said.
3 Indian men charged with killing Sikh separatist leader in Canada appear in court
SURREY, British Columbia: Three Indian men charged with killing Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia last year have appeared in court in the case that set off a diplomatic spat after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there were “credible allegations” of Indian involvement.
Canadian police had arrested the three Indian men last week in Edmonton, Alberta, and they have been charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Canadian Mounted Police Superintendent Mandeep Mooker said Friday that the investigation into whether the men had ties to India’s government was ongoing.
Nijjar, 45, was shot to death in his pickup truck last June after he left the Sikh temple he led in the city of Surrey. An Indian-born citizen of Canada, he owned a plumbing business and was a leader in what remains of a once-strong movement to create an independent Sikh homeland. India designated him a terrorist in 2020 and at the time of his death had been seeking his arrest for alleged involvement in an attack on a Hindu priest.
India has denied involvement in the slaying. In response to the allegations, India told Canada last year to remove 41 of its 62 diplomats in the country. Tensions remain but have somewhat eased since.
The arrested men — Kamalpreet Singh, 22, Karan Brar, 22, and Karanpreet Singh, 28 — appeared in court Tuesday via a video link and agreed to a trial in English. They were ordered to appear in British Columbia Provincial Court again on May 21.
Brar and Karanpreet Singh appeared in the morning. Kamalpreet’s appearance was delayed until the afternoon as he waited to speak to a lawyer.
The small provincial courtroom was filled with spectators during the morning session. Others crowded into an overflow room to watch the proceedings via video.
Richard Fowler, the defense lawyer representing Brar, said the case will eventually be moved to the Supreme Court and combined into one case.
About 100 people gathered outside the courthouse waving yellow flags and holding photos of Indian government officials whom they accuse of being involved in Nijjar’s killing.
Canadian police say the three suspects had been living in Canada as non-permanent residents.
A bloody decadelong Sikh insurgency shook north India in the 1970s and 1980s until it was crushed in a government crackdown in which thousands of people were killed, including prominent Sikh leaders.
The Khalistan homeland movement has lost much of its political power but still has supporters in the Indian state of Punjab, as well as in the sizable overseas Sikh diaspora. While the active insurgency ended years ago, the Indian government has repeatedly warned that Sikh separatists were trying to make a comeback.
UN: Myanmar displaced now at 3 million
- An estimated one-third of those displaced are children, according to the UN statement
YANGON: The number of displaced people in Myanmar has reached three million, the United Nations said, the vast majority forced to flee their homes by conflict unleashed by the military’s 2021 coup.
Around 2.7 million have fled since the putsch that toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s government after a short-lived experiment with democracy.
The coup sparked renewed clashes with established ethnic armed groups and birthed dozens of new “People’s Defense Forces” that the military has failed to crush.
“Myanmar stands at the precipice in 2024 with a deepening humanitarian crisis,” the UN’s resident coordinator in the country said in a statement released on Monday.
An estimated one-third of those displaced are children, according to the statement.
Around half of the three million have been displaced since late last year, when an alliance of ethnic armed groups launched an offensive across northern Shan state, the statement said.
The offensive seized swathes of territory and lucrative trade crossings on the China border, posing the biggest threat to the junta since it seized power.
Myanmar’s borderlands are home to a plethora of ethnic armed groups, many of whom have battled the military since independence from Britain in 1948 over autonomy and control of lucrative resources.
The UN said a severe funding shortfall was hampering its relief efforts, particularly ahead of the May-June cyclone season.
Last year cyclone Mocha smashed into western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, killing at least 148 people.
More than 355,000 people are currently displaced in western Rakhine state, which has been rocked since November by clashes between the Arakan Army and the military, the UN said.
Russian court says US soldier charged with theft causing ‘significant’ damage
- Detention of Gordon Black presents yet another diplomatic headache for the US
- The US soldier was detained in early May in Vladivostok, in Russia’s Far East
MOSCOW: US soldier Gordon Black, who has been detained the Russian city of Vladivostok until July 2, has been charged with theft causing significant damage, a Russian court said.
The detention of Black, who the Pentagon said traveled to Russia without authorization, presents yet another diplomatic headache for the United States, which has warned US citizens against all travel to Russia.
He was detained in early May in Vladivostok, in Russia’s Far East.
The Pervomaisky District Court of Vladivostok said in a statement that it had decided on the preventive measure to detain Black until July 2 for “secretly stealing the property of citizen T., causing the latter significant damage.”
“When choosing the preventive measure in the form of detention, the court came to the conclusion that US citizen B. (Black) — under the weight of the charges — could hide from the preliminary investigation authorities and the court to avoid responsibility,” the court said in the statement.
Earlier, the court’s press service identified the soldier as Gordon Black.
The Russian interior ministry in Vladivostok said on Tuesday that a 32-year-old woman had filed a complaint against the 34-year-old suspect.
The two had met in South Korea. The American had come to Vladivostok to visit her, the two had an argument, and she later filed a police report accusing him of stealing money, it said. He was arrested in a local hotel, having bought a plane ticket to return home.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that before his arrest in Russia, Black not only broke Army rules by traveling to the Russian city of Vladivostok without authorization, but he did so after passing through China.
