French President Emmanuel Macron has defended his shocking decision to dissolve parliament and call elections, urging French voters to unite and “say no to extremes”.
Three days after Macron made an explosive statement in response to the far-right National Rally’s dramatic victory in European elections, he denied he wanted to hand them the keys to power.
He said holding an election was the only option for Republicans. He said a wide range of political groups “that cannot share this extremist fanaticism” should unite against it.
His decision to hold two rounds of elections on June 30 and July 7 prompted the four left-wing parties to reach a cooperation agreement, but the conservative Republican Party is deeply divided.
Hardline Republican leader Eric Sciorti is facing calls to resign after calling for an alliance with a national rally led by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardera.
While an estimated half of grassroots Republicans supported such a coalition, the vast majority of party leaders rejected it out of hand.
Sciorti said the party’s Paris headquarters was being closed for security reasons and that in a few hours the party would hold an emergency meeting in Paris to decide whether to oust him. He denied planning any such meeting.
President Macron has been widely criticized for his apparently spontaneous decision to call elections, an hour after his party polled below 15%, while the National Rally had a European vote of almost 31.5%.
Two years into his second term as president, his party has lost its majority in the National Assembly, requiring the support of political allies for every piece of legislation. He said the system was clogged, preventing the government from taking action.
Mr Macron has said that as president he will not be involved in campaigning, leaving it to Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, although his speech on Wednesday sounded a lot like launching his party’s campaign.
Asked by reporters whether he had handed the keys to France to the far right, Macron said doing nothing was not an option and asking the people to decide was a democratic principle. Voters who supported a national rally on Sunday expressed their anger, saying: “The message has been received.”
Macron turned his fire to the left and the right, believing that the masks of both sides had faded and that the dispute over values had erupted in broad daylight.
He accuses Jyoti of turning his back on his party, which draws its heritage from Presidents de Gaulle, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.
He then said that the center-left had been in bed with the far-left who were guilty of anti-Semitism and anti-parliamentary attitudes.
Raphaël Glucksmann led his center-left party to third place on Sunday, with his campaign attracting French dissent backed by the more extreme Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The surrender faction alienated voters. However, within 24 hours of the results being announced, the center-left party struck a deal with France Unbowed.
Mélenchon accused the president of being mired in a confusing strategy and drowning in a barrage of insults toward “those who disagree with him.”
