France President Emmanuel Macron set to reprise Jacques Chirac

New Delhi: A French President, seeking a parliament more aligned with his ideology and programme of action, took the gamble by dissolving it prematurely for fresh elections - and ended up with a left-wing government that championed its own schemes and hampered his course. Emmanuel Macron in 2024? No, it was Jacques Chirac in 1997. Though the era and circumstances are different, but like Chirac, Macron is not going to have an easy time. As the dust settles on the snap parliamentary election that Macron called in a rather desperate gambit, the predictions of a sweep by the far-right National Rally have dissipated as it did not match its show in the EU Parliament elections and the first round of the French elections.

However, the the triumph of the hard left over the far-right is scarcely an outcome that he could have wanted. While no bloc - the far-right, the hard-left-led National Popular Front, or Macron’s own Ensemble is even remotely close to a majority in the 577-member National Assembly, forming the new government will be a complex task, as it involves a lot of wheeling and dealing. But the strikingly different ideological makeup of all the three major blocs makes any alliance difficult and its functioning and longevity doubtful.

If it ends in a Left-led government, as the NFP (as per its French name) demanded as it became the singest-largest bloc, it is not going to be easy for Macron in the country’s fourth spell of “cohabitation” - where different parties hold the presidency and the sway in the parliament.

In a last-ditch effort to ward off the far-right, Macron’s Centrists entered into a tacit alliance of convenience with the second-placed hard-left ensemble, with several third-placed candidates of both blocs quitting in various places so as to prevent division of votes and set up one-to-one contests against the National Rally in the second round.

The gambit did succeed in its primary aim of stopping what seemed an unstoppable march to power by Marine Le Pen and the youthful Jordan Bardella’s co-led National Rally but ended up benefitting the Left more than it did Macron and his party.

And the two forces may have struck up a tactical - and ultimately successful - alliance, there is no love lost between the two parties as the NFP partners are trenchant critics of Macron’s policies on the raised retirement age, and tax cuts, among others. (IANS)

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