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Post by Admin on May 9, 2017 18:30:16 GMT
Macron has at least one thing in his favor: the "majority amplifier" effect of an electoral system designed by post-war leader Charles de Gaulle specifically to maximize presidential independence from parliament. Last week, the first opinion survey for the legislative elections showed Macron's new movement "En Marche!" could win between 249 and 286 mainland France seats in the lower house. Even a figure at the bottom of that range would be a good outcome for him. He only needs 289 for an absolute majority, and the poll excluded 42 seats in Corsica and overseas. It foresaw centrist and conservative parties winning around 200-210 mainland seats, the far-right National Front 15-25 and the Socialists 28-43. "In the lowest-case scenario, En Marche would still be the largest political grouping, which would be enough to try to constitute a majority. The question would then be how and with whom," said OpinionWay's Bruno Jeanbart, who directed the poll.
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Post by Admin on May 12, 2017 18:29:02 GMT
When Marion Maréchal-Le Pen announced she was withdrawing from politics, the National Front prodigy was not slamming the door on a brilliant future. She was just leaving the door ajar. All the better to come back with a bang when the time is right. Maréchal-Le Pen – presidential runner-up Marine Le Pen’s niece – officially announced on Wednesday that she will not seek re-election to the lower-house National Assembly, just as the National Front (FN) is seeking to make good on its record performance last Sunday with a strong showing in June’s legislative elections. The 27-year-old granddaughter of party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen also plans to step down from the regional council office she holds in Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur. In a long open letter to constituents, Maréchal-Le Pen apologised for earlier denying rumours she was poised to make this move – so as not to “interfere with” the presidential campaign, she explained – and cited “reasons at once personal and professional” for stepping down from politics. The mother-of-one, who is reported to be divorcing, said she wants to spend more time with her toddler daughter. She also said she wants private sector experience. “You know my history; you know that the political world has always been my own,” she wrote. “At 27, there is still time for me to leave it for a while. I am intimately persuaded that if I don’t step away from it now, I never will.” France’s youngest National Assembly deputy, Maréchal-Le Pen shot to political stardom in 2012 when she was elected at age 22. She grew up on her grandfather’s mansion compound in Saint-Cloud, west of Paris. Her mother Yann, Marine’s sister, has played more discreet roles in the family (political) business, while her adoptive father, Samuel Maréchal, once ran the party’s youth wing. Long seen as a potential successor to her aunt, the third-generation Le Pen is in many ways her grandfather’s truer political heir.
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Post by Admin on May 18, 2017 18:26:32 GMT
French President Emmanuel Macron chaired the first meeting of a cross-partisan government on Thursday, uniting right-wingers, left-wingers, old hands and new faces in a team whose first goal is to win parliamentary elections in June. Those present included economy and budget ministers from the right, a TV environmentalist put in charge of ecology and energy, and a veteran Socialist who was defense minister in the preceding government but now has a Europe and foreign policy brief. The debut at the centrist leader's Elysee palace offices in central Paris followed publication of an opinion poll suggesting Macron's start-up party, Republic on the Move (REM), will come first in mid-June parliamentary elections; but it remained unclear whether he would win a majority.
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Post by Admin on Mar 3, 2018 18:19:42 GMT
Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right Front National, has been charged over photographs she tweeted showing gruesome images of purported atrocities by Islamic State. The move by a judge in Nanterre on Thursday came after the national assembly voted in November to strip Le Pen of her parliamentary immunity over the three photos posted in 2015. Le Pen, who lost to Emmanuel Macron in last year’s presidential vote, is facing charges of circulating “violent messages that incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity”, and that can be viewed by a minor. The crime is punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of €75,000 (£66,000). The pictures were posted a few weeks after the Paris terror attacks in November 2015, in which 130 people were killed.
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Post by Admin on Sept 24, 2018 18:06:24 GMT
A French court has ordered far-right leader Marine Le Pen to undergo a psychiatric assessment as it probes her decision to publish graphic images of Islamic State executions on social media. The 50-year-old head of the National Front — recently rebranded as the National Rally — posted three gruesome photos on Twitter in December 2015 after a journalist told a French television program that her party shared a "community of spirit" with the extremist group.
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