USSEL, France — The ascendancy of France’s President Emmanuel Macron is over, the former president Francois Hollande said on Saturday, after his former protege called a snap election likely to hand huge gains to the far right.
“I have no scores to settle at all; that’s all in the past,” Hollande told Agence France-Presse on the campaign trail in his native Correze department, where he is standing to be a member of parliament.
With abysmal poll ratings in 2017, the Socialist Hollande did not himself stand for a second term in that year’s election.
His former economy minister Macron, standing as a pro-business centrist, pulled off a surprise win that shattered traditional governing parties on the left and the right.
Now just two years into the younger man’s second term, Holland said: “Macronism is over, if indeed it ever existed. But it’s over; I say it with no special hostility.
“I don’t mean that his presidential term is coming to an end — that’s something different — but what he may have represented for a time is over.”
Macron was reelected for a second five-year term in 2022 and lost his absolute majority in parliament in legislative polls the same year.
His party has limped on in minority government, passing hard-fought and controversial reforms including raising the pension age and toughening immigration law.
However, a heavy defeat in European Parliament elections on June 9 prompted Macron to dissolve parliament as a way of breaking the deadlock.
A new chamber will be elected on June 30 and July 7, with the far-right National Rally looking set to win the most seats.
France’s two-round electoral system makes predicting outcomes tricky, but it appears unlikely that Macron’s gamble will result in his party winning a new majority.
Instead he could find himself presiding over a government run by an ideological opponent.
Macron’s rule has “had a heavy political cost”, Hollande said. “The parties were heavily damaged and public morale was, too. The far right has never been so strong.”
Hollande’s Socialist Party has formed an electoral alliance with other left parties including Greens, Communists and the hard-left France Unbowed.
Their New Popular Front is running second to the National Rally in polls, both well ahead of Macron’s Renaissance.
Political realignment
“It’s time for a political realignment,” Hollande said.
“I didn’t plan to stand for any election in my position. Something very serious had to happen.” That came in the shape of the National Rally’s more than 31 percent in the European elections, he said.
Some Socialist voters have struggled with the idea of backing an alliance with France Unbowed and its leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, with some party figures accused of antisemitism and a history of Euro-sceptic statements.
“I’m in the framework of an alliance because it has to be done,” Holland said. However, there is “no kind of confusion” between his positions and Melenchon’s, he said.
If elected, “I’ll be an MP who will call for responsibility whatever happens … vigilant and committed to finding solutions”, he said.
Agencies via Xinhua