PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday he would run for a second term in April’s elections, seeking a mandate to steer the euro zone’s second-largest economy through the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Macron announced his bid in a letter published by several regional newspapers.
If he succeeds, he would be the first French leader for two decades to win a second term in office.
“We have not achieved everything we set out to do. There are choices that, with the experience I have gained from you, I would probably make differently,” Macron said in the letter, listing the different crises he had to face over the past five years, including militant attacks, COVID, riots and war.
He defended his record, pointing to unemployment at a 15-year low. “I am running to defend our values that the world’s disorders are threatening,” he added.
Without giving a detailed manifesto, Macron said he would continue to cut taxes and push for the French to work more, suggesting a return of an abandoned pension reform. He also hinted at a reform of the education system, saying teachers should be freer and paid better.
Macron enters the presidential race just a month or so before the election’s first round on April 10. Opinion polls project that he is favorite to win a contest that sees multiple challengers on the right and left fragmenting the vote.
The Ukraine war has already upended the campaign, complicating Macron’s entry into the race and leaving two far-right contenders who had so far performed strongly in polls to justify their hitherto pro-Russia, pro-Putin stance.
With Macron at the forefront of European efforts to secure a cease-fire and a peaceful resolution to the conflict, a campaign with fewer rallies by the incumbent and an unusual focus on foreign policy lies ahead.
Macron, who has spoken on the phone with Putin 11 times this year, has said he would continue as the war rages on and acknowledged in the letter he will not be able to campaign as he would have liked because of the war.
That may not hurt his chances. Voter surveys have shown a bounce in support for Macron as far-right leaders Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour revise their views on relations with Moscow and amid an outpouring of sympathy for Ukrainian refugees.
But in a sign identity politics could rear its head again in the final stretch of the campaign, Zemmour, a former TV commentator known for his inflammatory anti-immigrant views, said in a reply to Macron’s letter that the leader was hostile to the values of Zemmour and his supporters.
“Emmanuel Macron spent the past five years fighting the France of our childhood. He hates our identity. We cherish it and want to transmit it to our children,” Zemmour said.
Center-right conservative Valerie Pecresse, who is in third place in the polls but would be his toughest opponent in a runoff, said Macron was running to do the reforms he had failed to do over the past five years. “You need courage to reform. I have it,” she said.
Macron became France’s youngest leader since Napoleon five years ago, pitching himself as a political outsider who would break the old left-right dichotomy, make France more investor-friendly and make the EU stronger.
He cut taxes for big business and the wealthy, loosened labor laws and marketed France Inc. as a start-up nation, but anti-government “yellow vest” protests and then the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to slow his reform plans.
Macron launches re-election bid to protect French from ‘world’s disorders’
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Macron launches re-election bid to protect French from ‘world’s disorders’
- Emmanuel Macron became France’s youngest leader since Napoleon five years ago, pitching himself as a political outsider who would break the old left-right dichotomy
- Macron marketed France Inc. as a start-up nation, but anti-government ‘yellow vest’ protests and the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to slow his reform plans
Top UN court to hear Rohingya genocide case against Myanmar
THE HAGUE: Did Myanmar commit genocide against its Rohingya Muslim minority? That’s what judges at the International Court of Justice will weigh during three weeks of hearings starting Monday.
The Gambia brought the case accusing Myanmar of breaching the 1948 Genocide Convention during a crackdown in 2017.
Legal experts are watching closely as it could give clues for how the court will handle similar accusations against Israel over its military campaign in Gaza, a case brought to the ICJ by South Africa.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims fled violence by the Myanmar army and Buddhist militias, escaping to neighboring Bangladesh and bringing harrowing accounts of mass rape, arson and murder.
Today, 1.17 million Rohingya live crammed into dilapidated camps spread over 8,000 acres in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
From there, mother-of-two Janifa Begum told AFP: “I want to see whether the suffering we endured is reflected during the hearing.”
“We want justice and peace,” said the 37-year-old.
’Senseless killings’
The Gambia, a Muslim-majority country in West Africa, brought the case in 2019 to the ICJ, which rules in disputes between states.
Under the Genocide Convention, any country can file a case at the ICJ against any other it believes is in breach of the treaty.
In December 2019, lawyers for the African nation presented evidence of what they said were “senseless killings... acts of barbarity that continue to shock our collective conscience.”
In a landmark moment at the Peace Palace courthouse in The Hague, Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi appeared herself to defend her country.
She dismissed Banjul’s argument as a “misleading and incomplete factual picture” of what she said was an “internal armed conflict.”
The former democracy icon warned that the genocide case at the ICJ risked reigniting the crisis, which she said was a response to attacks by Rohingya militants.
Myanmar has always maintained the crackdown by its armed forces, known as the Tatmadaw, was justified to root out Rohingya insurgents after a series of attacks left a dozen security personnel dead.
‘Physical destruction’
The ICJ initially sided with The Gambia, which had asked judges for “provisional measures” to halt the violence while the case was being considered.
The court in 2020 said Myanmar must take “all measures within its power” to halt any acts prohibited in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.
These acts included “killing members of the group” and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The United States officially declared that the violence amounted to genocide in 2022, three years after a UN team said Myanmar harbored “genocidal intent” toward the Rohingya.
The hearings, which wrap up on January 30, represent the heart of the case.
The court had already thrown out a 2022 Myanmar challenge to its jurisdiction, so judges believe they have the power to rule on the genocide issue.
A final decision could take months or even years and while the ICJ has no means of enforcing its decisions, a ruling in favor of The Gambia would heap more political pressure on Myanmar.
Suu Kyi will not be revisiting the Peace Palace. She has been detained since a 2021 coup, on charges rights groups say were politically motivated.
The ICJ is not the only court looking into possible genocide against the Rohingya.
The International Criminal Court, also based in The Hague, is investigating military chief Min Aung Hlaing for suspected crimes against humanity.
Another case is being heard in Argentina under the principle of universal jurisdiction, the idea that some crimes are so heinous they can be heard in any court.
