France’s two presidential candidates, outgoing President Emmanuel Macron and his nationalist right-wing rival Marine Le Pen, remained silent yesterday, a day after the official voting campaign, the results of which today seem decisive for the country’s future.
The latest opinion polls have shown Macron to win the runoff, which is the second version of what took place in 2017, with a narrower margin than the one recorded five years ago, when he received 66% of the vote but abstained rate can have a significant impact.
Marine Le Pen is a far-right extremist who came out from under her father’s cloak, and not from his positions
For the second time in a row, far-right leader Marine Le Pen has advanced to the decisive round of France’s presidential election, ending a decade she spent improving her public image without changing her platform.
An ambitious woman known for her tough temper is the youngest daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the Front National and one of the most controversial figures in recent French politics.
Like her father in 2002, Marin reached the second round of the 2017 elections when she lost to Emmanuel Macron, whom she will face again on Sunday.
Le Pen continued to “demonize” the National Front, going so far as to oust her founding father in August 2015 after becoming convinced that his controversial and controversial positions would remain an obstacle to any victory at the national level. a certain moment, he must stop.”
Le Pen has been working to change the image of the party, which she has led since 2011, through “normalization,” one of whose stations has changed its name since the National Rally was disbanded in place of the National Front in 2018. .
The name game is no longer alien to its political bloc: Jean-Marie’s heavy legacy has prompted the party to campaign, focusing on the name “Marin” instead of the painful moniker for many. years. In an interview with Closer magazine, she revealed that when she was young, it was not easy for people to get romantically involved with Marine Le Pen because of the name she goes by.
In the 2022 campaign against Macron, the former banker who some call the “president of the rich,” Le Pen focused on spending power, which has become a major concern for the French due to high energy and food prices around the world. in light of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Cecile Aldois, a junior fellow at the Institute of Political Science in Paris, said Le Pen is attacking Islam and wants to drastically reduce non-European immigration under the pretext of secularism, republican values and even feminism. The far-right candidate wants to include a “national priority” in the constitution that would deprive foreigners of a number of privileges. Like Zemmour, she also wants to expel illegal immigrants, criminals and foreigners who have committed offenses, in addition to those suspected of extremism and foreigners who have been unemployed for more than a year.
Emmanuel Macron is the heir to a tradition that seeks to adapt and change.
– Emmanuel Macron, with his divisive attitude and management style, shocked many French people who considered him out of touch with their reality, but he scored internationally on European challenges and memory-related issues.
Macron, accused of arrogance by the French, spent five years in office marked by his ability to change and adapt his policies as needed, prompting Le Monde to liken him to a “chameleon”.
From an unknown figure never elected to any public office, he became Minister of Economy in the government of former Socialist President François Hollande, then the youngest president to enter the Élysée Palace in 2017, when he was still 39 years old.
The ambitious young man knew how to portray himself as coming from outside the traditional arena of left and right, who knew how to skillfully play to disperse the traditional parties of the Fifth Republic.
In the beginning, he was called the “president of the rich” and the urban elite, especially after two decisions he made early in his term that the left did not take at all: abolish the wealth tax and cut housing subsidies.
Macron has also made risky bets during his tenure, such as in January 2021 he refused to impose a new comprehensive shutdown called for by ministers and scientists in the midst of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, but the decision ultimately worked in his favor.
Macron has been looking to expand his popularity base, especially in the latter stages, as he moved away from his liberal-reformist tendencies and decided to provide massive social and economic aid during the pandemic, placing it within the French “at all costs” aid equation. “. The outgoing president has pushed French society to make conciliatory steps with its history on issues that have remained unresolved for decades. His tenure witnessed a remarkable rapprochement between Paris and Kigali after he published in 2021 a committee of historians report, prepared at his request, acknowledging that France bears “great and serious responsibility” for the genocide of the Tutsi minority in Rwanda in 1994. He has also taken initiatives to reconcile with the memory of the Algerian War, and last year requested Al-Saffh, one of the Algerian Harkis who fought in the French army during the Algerian War and were “abandoned” by France. Macron, the first French president born after the fall of colonialism, worked to improve relations with African countries.
