PARIS: The French far-right National Rally (RN) insisted on Thursday that it could still win an absolute majority in parliament, after the centre and the left made local pacts aimed at thwarting its rise to power.

Three days before the run-off stage of France’s most critical legislative elections in recent history, a poll projected that the RN would fall short of total victory despite its success in the June 30 first round.

Tensions are growing as the clock ticks down to Sunday, with several physical assaults reported on candidates. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said 30,000 police officers would be deployed nationwide on voting day.

The outcome of the election will determine if postwar France elects its first far-right government or embarks on an era of potentially paralysing coalition politics. The centrist forces of President Emmanuel Macron and a broad-left wing coalition have between them withdrawn more than 200 candidates from the runoff on Sunday, in a joint effort to ensure the far right is defeated.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-centre-left coalition could emerge after the election to prevent the RN from taking power.

‘No place in our society’

Le Pen alleged that Macron was dreaming of a “single party” comprising groups from the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) to the right-wing Republicans (LR), but excluding the RN.

Macron, however, made clear at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that there was “no question” of the LFI being part of any coalition, according to a participant. 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”, Darmanin said.

Published in Dawn, July 5th, 2024