PARIS: French far-right leader Marine le Pen insisted Thursday her party can still win control of parliament despite the center and left scrambling to block her way and football hero Kilian Mbappe urging fans to outvote “those people.”
Three days before Sunday’s run-off in France’s most critical legislative elections in recent history, a poll projected Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) would fall short of an overall majority despite dominating the June 30 first round vote.
Tensions are growing as the clock ticks down to Sunday, with assaults reported on candidates and the outcome will determine if postwar France elects its first far-right government since World War II, or embarks on an era of potentially paralysing coalition politics.
France’s iconic football captain, striker Kylian Mbappe, addressed the race at a news conference in Hamburg ahead of the team’s Euro 2024 quarter-final against Portugal, warning: “We can’t leave our country in the hands of those people there.
“I think we all saw the results, it’s catastrophic,” he said of the RN’s first round victory. “We hope that that will change and that everyone will mobilize to vote, and to vote for the right side.”
Mbappe’s intervention will encourage both the centrist camp, led by President Emmanuel Macron, and the broad-left wing coalition who have between them withdrawn more than 200 candidates from the runoff on Sunday in a joint effort to ensure the far right is defeated.
“I think there is still the capacity to have an absolute majority, with the electorate turning out in a final effort to get what they want,” the RN’s three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen told BFM television.
“I say turn out to vote as it’s a really important moment to get a change in politics in all the areas that are making you suffer right now,” she said.
If the RN wins an absolute majority of 289 seats in the 577-member National Assembly, it would be able to form a government with Le Pen’s 28-year-old protege Jordan Bardella as prime minister.
But she acknowledged that Macron’s centrists and the New Popular Front (NFP) coalition had made her party’s task tougher with their “operation” to withdraw candidates to unite the anti-RN vote.
The move has sparked speculation that a right-center-left coalition could emerge after the election to prevent the RN from taking power.
Le Pen alleges that the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) could figure in such a coalition, an idea dismissed by Macron.
Le Pen, who is expected to make a fourth attempt to win the Elysee Palace in 2027, acknowledged that there had been problems with a handful of RN candidates, one of whom had to withdraw after a picture of her emerged wearing a Nazi-era Luftwaffe cap.
“There are statements that have been inadmissible and will involve sanctions and there are also statements that are just clumsy,” Le Pen said.
Four people, including three minors, were detained after government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot and her team were attacked while they were sticking up campaign posters in Meudon outside Paris, prosecutors said.
Thevenot, who is of Mauritian origin, was not harmed but a colleague and a supporter were wounded and taken to hospital after the attack by around 20 people.
“Violence and intimidation have no place in our society,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal wrote on X.
Of the 30,000 police to be deployed nationwide Sunday, 5,000 would be on duty in Paris so that the “far left and far right do not create disorder,” Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin said.
Macron’s decision to call snap elections three years ahead of schedule after his party’s drubbing in EU Parliament elections is seen as a huge gamble that could plunge France into chaos weeks before it hosts the Olympics and at a time when Paris is playing a key role in backing Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.
A poll by Harris Interactive projected that the RN and its allies would win 190 to 220 seats in the National Assembly, the NFP 159 to 183 seats and Macron’s Ensemble (Together) alliance 110 to 135.
French far right says power within grasp as Mbappe warns of disaster
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French far right says power within grasp as Mbappe warns of disaster
- A poll projected Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) would fall short of an overall majority despite dominating the June 30 first round vote
- France’s iconic football captain, striker Kylian Mbappe, warned: “We can’t leave our country in the hands of those people there”
Youth voters take center stage in Bangladesh election after student-led regime change
- About 45% of Bangladeshis eligible to vote in Thursday’s election are aged 18-33
- Election follows 18 months of reforms after the end of Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule
DHAKA: When he goes to the polls on Thursday, Atikur Rahman Toha will vote for the first time, believing that this election can bring democratic change to Bangladesh.
A philosophy student at Dhaka University, Toha was already eligible to vote in the 2024 poll but, like many others, he opted out.
“I didn’t feel motivated to even go to vote,” he said. “That was a truly one-sided election. The election system was fully corrupted. That’s why I felt demotivated. But this time I am truly excited to exercise my voting rights for the first time.”
The January 2024 vote was widely criticized by both domestic and international observers and marred by a crackdown on the opposition and allegations of voter fraud.
But the victory of the Awami League of ex-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was short-lived, as a few months later the government was ousted by a student-led uprising, which ended the 15-year rule of Bangladesh’s longest-serving leader.
The interim administration, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, took control in August 2024 and prepared a series of reforms to restructure the country’s political and institutional framework and organize the upcoming vote.
About 127.7 million Bangladeshis are eligible to cast their ballots, according to Election Commission data, with nearly a third of them, or 40.4 million, aged 18-29. Another 16.9 million are 30-33, making it a youth–dominated poll, with the voters hopeful the outcome will help continue the momentum of the 2024 student-led uprising.
“We haven’t yet fully transitioned into a democratic process. And there is no fully stable situation in the country,” Toha said. “After the election we truly hope that the situation will change.”
For Rawnak Jahan Rakamoni, also a Dhaka University student, who is graduating in information science, voting this time meant that her voice would count.
“We are feeling that we are heard, we will be heard, our opinion will matter,” she said.
“I think it is a very important moment for our country, because after many years of controversial elections, people are finally getting a chance to exercise their voting rights and people are hoping that this election will be more meaningful and credible. This should be a fair election.”
But despite the much wider representation than before, the upcoming vote will not be entirely inclusive in the absence of the Awami League, which still retains a significant foothold.
The Election Commission last year barred Hasina’s party from contesting the next national elections, after the government banned Awami League’s activities citing national security threats and a war crimes investigation against the party’s top leadership.
The UN Human Rights Office has estimated that between July 15 and Aug. 5, 2024 the former government and its security and intelligence apparatus, together with “violent elements” linked to the Awami League, “engaged systematically in serious human rights violations and abuses in a coordinated effort to suppress the protest movement.”
It estimated that at least 1,400 people were killed during the protests, with the majority shot dead from military rifles.
Rezwan Ahmed Rifat, a law student, wanted the new government to “ensure justice for the victims of the July (uprising), enforced disappearances, and other forms of torture” carried out by the previous regime.
The two main parties out of the 51 contesting Thursday’s vote are the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami. Jamaat, which in 2013 was banned from political participation by Hasina’s government, heads an 11-party alliance, including the National Citizen Party formed by student leaders from the 2024 movement.
“I see this election as a turning point of our country’s democratic journey … It’s not just a normal election,” said Falguni Ahmed, a psychology student who will head to the polls convinced that no matter who wins, it will result in the “democratic accountability” of the next government.
Ahmed added: “People are not voting only for their leaders; they are also voting for the restoration of democratic credibility. That’s why this election is very different.”
