Paris (Washington Insider Magazine) – During Sunday’s presidential second round of voting, French voters will pick between two completely different futures for their nation, as centrist President Emmanuel Macron bids to defeat his right-wing opponent, Marine Le Pen.
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Macron, 44, is campaigning on a vision of a creative, globalized France at the helm of a powerful European Union. Le Pen, 53, has proposed a fiscally nationalist, inward-looking programme that would constitute a significant departure from France’s post-World War II trajectory.
After coming first and second in the1st round of voting 2 weeks ago, Le Pen and Macron proceeded to Sunday’s decisive race, setting up a rerun of the 2017 campaign. Macron defeated Le Pen by roughly two-to-one in that election.
This time, analysts predict a much closer contest.
Before Russia attacked Ukraine in February, the competition was intended to be an efficient referendum on the development of France’s political extremists, causing a change in national discourse.
Macron’s diplomatic efforts diverted him off the presidential campaign, whereas Le Pen was pushed to retract her prior backing for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Le Pen has long been an ardent supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, even meeting him amid her 2017 race, and her party had previously sought funding from a Russian-Czech bank.
She has recently criticized Moscow’s invasion move and justified the loan, claiming that her party was obliged to look for funds outside of France since no French financial institution would grant permission.
Despite her earlier admiration for Putin, Marine Le Pen has positioned herself to prevail by focusing on economic concerns rather than the conventional far-right agenda of immigration, identity, and security which drove her 2017 presidential campaign. She has not, however, discarded many of her most divisive policies, such as prohibiting Muslim women from donning head coverings in public.
Experts assert she has done a great job empathizing with French citizens having trouble making ends meet, particularly further than her roots in the erstwhile industrial strongholds where people are out of work due to technological headway and globalization. She also did better in the presidential debate on Wednesday than she previously did in 2017, after her bad performance sealed her destiny.
Critics, on the other hand, claim that Le Pen’s platform has failed to fully illustrate how Paris would pay for several of the remedies presented. They also wonder if they all follow French and EU regulations.
While Le Pen has backed down from several of her more problematic plans, such as exiting the EU and dumping the euro, analysts believe that several of her initiatives might still put France at odds with the EU.
Macron, on the other hand, is not exactly the most popular newcomer on the scene. The former economics minister and investment banker has to defend a chaotic political career while also persuading voters that his plan, which includes massive industrial spending and combating climate change, isn’t just more of the same.
Macron’s ambitious goal to strengthen the European Union’s competence and geopolitical heft earned him praise both home and abroad in his first term.
His domestic initiatives, on the other hand, are more polarizing, and he continues to remain a controversial figure who is viewed as arrogant, snobbish, and very out of touch by many. Macron’s management of the yellow vest protest, which has been one of France’s longest-running demonstrations in decades, has been severely condemned, and his performance on the Covid-19 outbreak is ambiguous.
During the epidemic, the French administration invested billions to keep enterprises viable, which increased the national deficit. During the crisis, Macron’s defining policy of having individuals to provide certificates of vaccination in order to go on with their daily lives significantly raised vaccination numbers, but it also enraged a loud minority who opposed his leadership.
While Macron received 27.8% of the ballot during the 1st round to win the presidency, the results revealed widespread voter dissatisfaction with the existing quo. During the first round, contenders on the far left and right received a record 57 percent of the vote, while 26.3 percent of registered voters remained home, culminating in the lowest voter turnout in 20 years.
The candidates wrapped up their campaigning on Friday. The media is restricted from covering until the voting ends at 8 p.m. local time.