Posted on 04/11/2022 3:59:31 AM PDT by FarCenter
Could France be facing its Trump moment? For US commentators, France’s presidential runoff between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen has raised the prospect of a fresh shakeup in transatlantic alliances, which could test Western unity against Putin’s Russia as war rages in Ukraine.
As of late Sunday evening, Washington, DC time, the outcome of France’s first round of presidential voting was all but certain: incumbent Emmanuel Macron will face the far-right's Marine Le Pen in a rematch of their 2017 run-off election. And this time around, the numbers suggest that Le Pen is well within reach of the Élysée Palace, with two of the latest polls putting her at 49 points to Macron’s 51 in the second round of voting on April 24.
The election has “exposed seismic shifts in France’s political culture”, wrote Vox’s Ellen Ioanes.
“I’ve never seen an election change as quickly as this one has,” Mabel Berezin, director of Cornell University’s Institute for European Studies, told Vox.
For many in the anglophone world, Le Pen’s resurgence has raised the spectre of 2016, when the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s election shook up the world order. Since then, liberal and progressive candidates from the US’s Joe Biden to Germany’s Olaf Scholz have regained the upper hand. But the prospect of Le Pen win serves as reminder that the battle between liberal democrats and right-wing populists remains far from settled.
“A Le Pen victory in the second round would mark the first far-right presidency in French history,” wrote the Washington Post’s Rick Noack. “It would also upend politics in Europe – replacing the most fervent advocate of European Union cooperation with someone known for anti-E.U. rhetoric, and giving an official platform to the far-right at a time when nationalists in many other European countries have been struggling.”
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
Do the people of France trust their elections? Would Le Pen be allowed to win?
Who is going to be “counting the votes”? ….
The French would rather wait in line to let the muslims chop their heads off than vote for Le Pen. Macron will stay as long as he isn’t out lefted by another Marxist.
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