Piketty: "Macron's Election Defeat Due to Demonization of the Left"

"Macron Elected with Left's Help"
"But No Joint Policy Discussions"

In the early French parliamentary elections held at the end of last month, the far-right party Rassemblement National (RN) achieved a landslide victory, and an analysis has emerged that President Emmanuel Macron's "demonization of the left" was a factor in the centrist ruling coalition's electoral defeat.

On the 1st (local time), Thomas Piketty, a professor at Paris School of Economics, who appeared on CNBC's "Street Signs Europe," explained the reason for the centrist forces' crushing defeat in the first round of the French early parliamentary elections by saying, "President Macron kept demonizing the left." He added, "Even though Macron could not have become president in 2017 or 2022 without the left's support against Marine Le Pen, he never tried to do anything together with the forces that backed him." Professor Piketty is a French economist renowned for his book on income and wealth inequality, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century."

[Image source=AFP Yonhap News]

Professor Piketty pointed out that France has three major voting blocs: the "far-right," the "centrist economic bloc," and the "left," and that President Macron's Renaissance party has so far only gained votes in "very fancy places" where economic elites are concentrated within France. He continued, "With such a narrow voter base, it is impossible to govern the country for a long time," and evaluated, "The results of this election provide a lesson to other countries that even if the centrist forces unite, governing the country against both the left and the right cannot last long."

President Macron called for early elections earlier last month after the far-right made gains in the European Parliament elections. However, the right-wing surge did not subside, and the far-right party RN, previously considered a fringe in French politics, secured first place in the first round with 33.15% of the vote. For the first time since its founding in 1972, it reserved the position of the largest party and stood at the center of parliamentary power. The left-wing coalition New Popular Front (NFP) received 27.99%, and the pro-government Ensemble coalition, including Macron's Renaissance party, garnered only 20.04% of the vote.

As in the 2022 and 2017 presidential elections, President Macron called for a broad coalition of center-left and center-right forces to block the far-right's rise, but experts diagnose that Macron's policy lines?such as welfare cuts, raising the pension age, and suppressing protests?alienated left-wing voters.

With the situation urgent, the left and centrist camps are moving toward candidate unification. According to the French daily Le Monde's own tally, as of 6 p.m. on the 2nd, out of about 1,300 candidates qualified for the second round, 218 have withdrawn. Among them, 130 are from the NFP, and 82 are pro-government Ensemble candidates aligned with President Macron. Most of those who withdrew were candidates who placed third in the first round. It is interpreted that they judged that dragging the election into a three-way contest would split votes and thus benefit the RN.

Jacques Toubon, a former minister who served under former President Jacques Chirac's right-wing government, emphasized in an interview with Le Monde, "All parties must do everything they can to block RN's rise to power." A group of 1,000 French historians with left-leaning tendencies also posted an appeal in Le Monde urging voters to oppose RN. The second round of voting is scheduled for the 7th.