Macron won the election, lost the halo?

The days ahead will not be easy

On April 24, local time, the preliminary export polls of the French presidential election were announced, and the expiring President Macron was successfully elected.

He defeated the presidential candidate of the far-right party National Union, marina Le Pen, an "old rival" five years ago.

It looks like a rerun of an old drama, but on closer inspection, this election, which has a thrilling approval rating among the candidates, is completely different from that year. Macron made history this time, becoming the first French president to be successfully re-elected in 20 years, but tomorrow in France and Europe will hover at the crossroads of history.

"Moderate Elite" vs "Dangerous Woman"

This is Marina Le Pen's third failed assault on the presidency.

Le Pen's family is known as "France's most dangerous family", and the founder of the far-right faction of the National Front, the predecessor of the "National Union", was her father, Le Pen the Elder.

Ultra-nationalism – France first, against cultural pluralism, against economic globalization;

Extreme xenophobia – anti-Islam, anti-Semitism, anti-immigration, anti-refugee;

Extreme democratization – opposition to representative democracy, support for referendums, opposition to the elite.

Extremes are the political undertones of the "National Front."

In Le Pen's mind, it was her father who passed on the "political virus" to herself, and she did not hesitate to break with it in order to make the "National Front" a mainstream political party. After losing her first campaign, she ran for the second time in 2017 against political rising star Macron.

Macron is middle-class, young and ambitious, and appears as a centrist who straddles the left and right, vowing to "revive France". Above all, he portrayed the moderate elite as the opposite of the radicalization that Le Pen represented.

The "Chosen Son" dazzled The French center-left electorate. That year, the 39-year-old Macron, with a fabulous 30% advantage, beat Le Pen to become the youngest helmsman of the French Fifth Republic.

After the second defeat, Le Pen rose to catch up, adjusted his strategy, renamed the "National Front", and began to play the pro-people and tolerance cards, trying to dilute the extreme color of the party.

The president is "no less than mortal", and the aura is faded?

Perhaps the environment has changed, or Macron's aura has disappeared, and Le Pen's strategy has worked. In the first round of voting in the 2022 general election, Macron received 27.8% of the vote and Le Pen received 23.2% of the vote, and Le Pen successfully narrowed the gap to 4 percentage points.

This is Le Pen's closest to the presidency.

On April 22, the day of the final showdown of the general election, Le Pen mocked Macron in an interview for "like a god who lives high on Mount Olympus, occasionally descending".

In the past five years, Macron has been labeled "indifferent", "arrogant", "high" and other labels more than once. Macron called himself "Jupiter" (king of the gods in Roman mythology), and then with a drastic reform, he attacked several vulnerable groups:

The exclusion of taxes on movable and financial investment property is considered to shift the burden on the rich to the lower middle class;

Reform of the state-owned railway company, resulting in the loss of iron jobs for new recruits;

Proposed retirement age raised to 65 years, near retirement dissatisfaction, the outbreak of the longest general strike in decades;

The massive increase in fuel taxes to cut emissions has angered blue-collar workers and truck drivers, sparking the country's worst riot in 50 years, the "Yellow Vests" movement.

The "Yellow Vests" movement was Macron's worst political crisis since taking office, and its support fell to 23% at one point, which led to the name of "rich president". For the first time, two years in power, he responded positively, denying at a press conference that the interests of the rich were in the interests of the rich and admitting that governing would be more humane. But he doesn't think he's letting France "go down the wrong path."

As a result, in this election, Le Bon Cut hit Macron's pain point and flexibly played the people's livelihood card. She went to the masses to settle her daily life, showed empathy on social media, bit macron's problems such as the decline in the purchasing power of the people during Macron's tenure, and pulled away some voters.

Macron also showed off his closeness to the people by taking selfies with the people. Everything that French leaders are showing on social media is having an increasingly unexpected impact than in 2017. After showing photos of himself striding at the campaign site, exposing his chest due to the heat and frowning on the mediation of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Macron received a polarized evaluation.

Voters "don't want both"?

Macron seems to be more concerned with shaping France's image as a great power in Europe and the world than in domestic affairs.

From visiting Lebanon twice in January after the Explosion of Beirut to sitting at a "three-meter table" to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, busy with diplomatic mediation of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, efforts to return to "Gaullistism" have helped Macron save his support.

However, the French leader was so so immersed in international affairs that he forgot his own voters until a week before the election, when he gave his first campaign speech. Patriotic French believe that the president should deal with his country's problems first.

Reuters pointed out that even if he wins, the signs that Macron will face a difficult tenure have long been apparent.

According to media analysis by the BBC and other media, the second round of turnout in this general election is the lowest level since 1969, and a large number of French voters have decided to vote blank, or even not vote, to express dissatisfaction with the current system.

The rise in support of Le Pen's faction over the past five years suggests that ultra-conservative ideas are no longer marginal ideas in French society. Still, de-demonizing appearances aside, the core of its policies still doesn't reassure voters, such as Le Pen's proposal to ban the wearing of Islamic headscarves in public. But that doesn't stop voters from supporting Le Pen in order to oppose Macron.

Agence France-Presse noted that Macron had promised to do everything he could to ensure that the French did not vote for the far right, but he failed. The "Republican Front", which traditionally joined forces with the left and the right to contain the far right, lost its strength and was caught up by the "anti-Macron Front".

Before the election, there was also a popular view in France, that is, "neither". Tens of thousands of people from more than 30 organizations and trade unions in Paris demonstrated, and the biggest demand was "no Macron, no Le Pen." This means that the political spectrum of France is undergoing unpredictable changes, perhaps not oscillating from side to side in the middle, but either in the middle or in the opposite direction of the poles, which are tearing apart French society.

The days ahead will not be easy

The challenges don't stop there. The strength of Le Pen's far right has become a "roadblock" for Macron to form a new government. The COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the constant testing of his various internal reforms will not make his future life easy.

Le Pen's advocacy of France's priority is to be xenophobic and grouped in a "fantasy" and extreme way, advocating withdrawal from NATO to fight alone; Macron's pragmatism and "looking outward" tell the outside world through the election results that in a rapidly changing world, French voters believe that it is difficult to stand alone on their own, and the idea of uniting allies and strengthening the status and role of the EU has prevailed.

Macron has always been critical of the dominance of the United States in NATO, and he sought to form a European army early in his tenure in an attempt to move toward European strategic autonomy. During the Trump administration, macron angrily criticized NATO for being on the verge of "brain death" after a brief honeymoon period of speeches at the U.S. conference.

However, after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Macron's mediation was not obvious, and France had to side with the United States and NATO, one step away from the dream of strategic autonomy. Macron believes that NATO has been "rescued from the dead."

Surprisingly, what is special about this election is that Western countries and Macron are equally anxious.

As a Putin supporter, Le Pen acknowledged that Crimea belongs to Russia and argued that the European security framework was wrong to exclude Russia. If Le Pen wins, the impact will be no different from Brexit and Trump's election as US president, becoming another "black swan" to take off in 2022.

Therefore, German Prime Minister Scholz, Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez, and Portuguese Prime Minister Costa jointly published an opinion article on the 21st, fiercely attacking Le Pen for conspiring with the "anti-democratic forces", which refers to Russia.

The European Anti-Fraud Office also accused Le Pen and his father, members of the National Union, of embezzling more than 600,000 euros of EU funds, but Le Pen countered that Europe was trying to interfere in France's internal affairs.

As the dust settles on the election, under the Triumphal Arch, it seems difficult to tell who is in Triumph.

Jiang Shixue, a distinguished professor at Shanghai University, pointed out that the new French government will face several challenges:

In terms of internal affairs:

First, we must further stimulate the economy at home so that the economy can get out of the negative impact caused by the epidemic as soon as possible;

Second, the commitments made during the campaign should be implemented;

Third, at present, there are continuous demonstrations in France, and it is necessary to do a good job in social stability and improve social order.

In terms of foreign relations, the new French government needs to consider:

First, how to deal with the spillover effects of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, mainly referring to the refugee problem and energy problems;

Second, how to play An important role for France in transatlantic relations, especially how to deal with relations with the United States;

Third, how to promote European integration with Germany and some other EU member states, including how to strengthen Europe's "strategic autonomy".

Column Editor-in-Chief: Gu Wanquan Text Editor: Song Yanlin Caption Source: Visual China Image Editor: Shao Jing

Source: Author: China News Network