So far, the new French President Macron and his La République en marche (REM) have only nominated candidates in 428 out of 577 electoral districts. As promised, half of them are men, the other half are women. According to REM, 52% of them come from civil society and only 24 former Socialist Party parliamentarians are among them.
Macron and his team had promised to present largely fresh, new political faces. However, the remaining electoral districts represent districts were candidates of Les Républicains (LR), mainly close to Alain Juppé and Bruno Le Maire have a chance of winning. In addition, according to French journalists close to the action, Macron and his team are negotiating with the teams of centrists Jean-Louis Borloo and François Bayrou, who both would like to have a parliamentary group.
In short, President Macron tries to win over the Republican right and the political center to get a majority in parliament in June. The primary goal is surely to get a parliamentary majority for Macron aka a presidential majority. The other option is to have parliamentarians ready to work with the new president in a coalition government.
The goal of winning 289 electoral districts and therefore a majority of 289 parliamentarians in the National Assembly is not out of reach for President Macron. Alain Juppé, Bruno Le Maire, Jean-Louis Borloo, François Bayrou and others from the Republicans and from centrist parties have announced to be ready to work with the young, new president, who was born on December 21, 1977 but who has already shown that he is a savvy politician.
19,000 people offered their services to represent Macron’s new party REM in parliament. Time can only tell how careful the selection was. It is obvious that you cannot just present fresh, new faces when you have to govern. Therefore, some experienced politicians from the political left, center and right will be in Macron’s team. The two-round parliamentary election will take place on June 11 and June 18, 2017.
The five conditions set out to be in Macron’s team were: to represent renewal (goal of 50% of candidates from civil society); gender equality (50% of female candidates); a clean criminal record; cross-section political views; sign up to Macron’s program and his party; candidates can be from other parties, but in that case the cannot run under the REM umbrella, unless they are from the centrist MoDem party of François Bayrou.
President Hollande’s mandate expires on Sunday, May 14, at midnight. Therefore, the new president has to take office before. Around that day, President Macron will present his prime minister and his cabinet, which will be the first major indication of where he wants to go to. This will be the moment when politicians of the Republican right and center will decide whether to join Macron’s party or to form a coalition with REM or to stay away from Macron and try to win a majority for themselves.
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Emmanuel Macron in April 2015. Photo Copyright © Claude Truong-Ngoc.
Article added on May 12, 2017 at 05:55 Paris time. Added to our newly designed pages on December 7, 2021.
