Tens of thousands of polling stations are open across the country, which will close at 20:00 local time (21:00 Moscow time), after which the first preliminary results will be known. It is worth clarifying right away that, as a rule, there are few clear winners – those who received 50 percent or more of the vote in the first round. The remaining mandates for the Bourbon Palace, which are 577 seats, will be distributed in a week during the decisive second round, where only candidates who received at least 12.5 percent in the first round will qualify.
Almost all surveys carried out by local social services and institutions predicted a landslide victory, both in the first round and at the end of the current elections, of Marine Le Pen’s national party, which, for tactical reasons, is led by a star in rise on the French political scene. horizon, Jordan Bardella, 28 years old. This party is expected to have a majority in parliament. The only question is which it will be: relative (between 230 and 260 seats) or absolute, that is, more than half of the 577 seats in the National Assembly amphitheater.
Second place, also according to experts, is occupied by the “New Popular Front”, which includes parties classified here as left-wing, namely Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s “Insubordinate France”, the Socialist Party, the Communists and the “Greens”. Competing with each other, they were able to unite overnight, which greatly confused the plans of the Elysée Palace, which hoped to win over the centre-left, the Social Democrats and other waverers among them.
In the rearguard of the parliamentary race is the ruling bloc led by the presidential party Renacimiento, which risks losing more than half of its parliamentary mandates.
And this is not a big surprise. After all, three quarters of French people see the current elections as an opportunity, according to one of the leaders of the sociological company Opinion Way, Bruno Jambard, to “punish” Macron. And there are many complaints against him. Here they remember well the speeches of the “yellow vests”, the stormy demonstrations of opponents of the pension reform imposed on the country against the will of millions. It is clear that they do not like the attitude of the authorities in the Ukrainian conflict either. He especially plans to send French soldiers to Ukraine.
In this sense, we pay attention to the words of Jordan Bardell, who, if National Unity wins, can aspire to the position of prime minister. Thus, in unison with the feelings of the French, he made it clear that, once at the head of the government, he intends to avoid an escalation in relations with Russia, not to send “French soldiers to the territory of Ukraine”, and also not to provide long-range missiles to kyiv.
Marine Le Pen is following the same line. Provoking anger in the corridors of the Elysée Palace, in an interview with a local publication, she claimed that the “title of Commander-in-Chief”, which corresponds to the President of the Fifth Republic, is “honorary”, since the head of the government cabinet controls the state treasury. And therefore, Marine Le Pen stressed, the president will not be able to send soldiers to Ukraine “against the will of the prime minister”.
Faced with the prospect of a very real “cohabitation” with a prime minister from the opposite political camp, as is believed here, the resident of the Elysee Palace will soon be faced with so many problems of a very different nature that his pro-kyiv fervour will most likely wane.
