France heads to polls in legislative elections

PARIS - French voters will cast ballots Sunday to elect its legislature, reported Anadolu Agency.

Emmanuel Macron won the presidency in April -- the first head of state to win reelection in two decades.

The first round of elections for the government’s lower house, the National Assembly, is on Sunday with the second round one week later on June 19.

Despite a strong majority in his centre-right party, Macron will face stiff competition from a coalition known as the New Ecological and Social Popular Union (Nupes), a group of four opposition parties that chose to band together against Macron.

They are comprised of the Socialist, Communist, EELV Greens and France Unbowed parties.

The National Assembly comprises 577 seats. As part of the coalition, the four parties of Nupes agreed to back just one candidate for each of the seats: 100 from the Greens, 70 from the Socialists, 50 from the Communists, and 360 from the France Unbowed movement.

In France’s capital as well as in its various regions, multitudinous issues rule the day, from fishing rights in the northwest to immigration issues in Calais in the north and on the Mediterranean, and farming issues in the middle.

Elevated gas prices and inflation are hitting ordinary consumers in and around bigger cities.

A genuine divide exists between those who favour Macron and his system of governing and those who do not, feeling that he has accomplished little and that much of his presidency has been more posing than doing.

Those who stand firmly on the side of the president, however, feel the strong need to pull together. And that opposition, dissent, is positive for the country.

According to an IPSOS-Sopra-Sterio poll conducted Friday, Together!, which is a coalition of parties that support Macron-La Republique En Marche, MoDem and Horizons, is barely inching out the Nupes, in a 28 per cent versus 27 per cent contest.

Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is seizing 19.5 per cent of the vote. - BERNAMA