Progressive forces downplayed Sunday’s presidential victory over Marine Le Pen, arguing that what happened was a rejection of the far right rather than an interest in Macron’s five more years at the Elysee.
In this sense, Mélenchon, who finished third in the first round, tonight announced the start of the “third round” and asked the left to accompany his proposal to create an enlarged popular union.
On June 12th and 19th, in the general elections, we can beat Macron; Another world is still possible if you elect a maximum number of deputies from the People’s Union, he emphasized.
According to the leader of La Francia Insumisa, the re-elected president is “swimming in a sea of abstentions and blank and blank ballots” amid a forecast of 28 percent absenteeism in today’s election.
The national secretary of the Communist Party and former Elysée candidate Fabien Roussel also called for a global unity of the left with parliamentarians to avoid divisions.
Together we must strive to win a majority of MPs against a president who was re-elected today only in favor of rejecting the representative of the extreme right, he warned in a speech.
According to Roussel, the worst has been avoided, but the threat to democracy has not gone away.
For her part, the mayor of Paris and former socialist candidate in the presidential election, Anne Hidalgo, called for the rebuilding of a “new left” that would fight its first struggle in the general elections in June.
I call for the unity of all forces of the democratic left, he declared in a message on Twitter congratulating Macron on his victory.
Former socialist minister and candidate in the 2007 presidential election, Ségolène Royal, called for a balance in parliament based on a reshuffle of the left around Mélenchon, who received more than seven million votes in the first ballot and stood at the gates of the runoff, losing to Le Pen with just over a point.
mgt/wmr