By Razane Matar | Staff Writer
Amid France’s upcoming 2022 elections, President Macron will be having a debate with Marine Le Pen, the runner-up in France’s first round of electoral votes. So far polls have shown a 10-point lead favoring President Macron, consistent with the prior 2017 elections. In 2017, President Macron had won the election with a 66.1% majority vote against Le Pen. Yet, with an onslaught of criticisms of Macron’s recent decisions with COVID and economic policies, voting dynamics might just take a turn. Europe is on high alert to see if Macron will serve another five years in office to work with the European Union, which the far-right Le Pen claimed has plans to reform under her party principles if she were to win. In this debate, Marine Le Pen is looking to restructure and moderate her anti-immigration party policies to attract voters. The most likely rebuttal will be Macron criticizing the way she will be handling foreign policy, especially with the support and commitment she gave to President Vladimir Putin’s administration. Macron will use that as a factor to sway public votes.
So far there is no guaranteed winner, as Macron has stated there is a big chance of an upset – as we have previously seen with Briton’s 2016 vote to leave the EU and Americans voting in favor of Donald Trump for the 2016 elections. Either way, France is encouraging people to vote. The French Prime Minister, Jean Castex, claimed: “We have to convince the French that Emmanuel Macron’s programmes are the best for France and for them”. In addition, the Prime Minister stated if Macron wins, his government will resign to give the governing party new impetus in advance of legislative elections in June.
On April 21, 2022, Macron did what was expected to happen a week prior – he criticized Marine Le Pen’s links with Russia. Furthermore, he also mentioned how his opponent’s party had taken a 9-million-euro loan from a Czech-Russian bank, “You depend on Russian power, and you depend on Mr. Putin”. He also criticized her plan to ban Muslim women from wearing the hijab in public – which is decidedly ironic considering the current laws banning the hijab from the workplace. He says that the matter would cause a “civil war” due to the fact France has the largest population of Muslims in Western Europe. In retort, Le Pen said she wasn’t under Russia’s power. She described herself as free of such influences and stated that what Macron is implying is false and untrue. Le Pen put forward her plan to bring down the cost of living and sought to portray herself as a savior for the lower class, who have a harder time making ends meet in the current pandemic crisis. Regardless, we shall see how the elections pan out, as the French elections are critical in determining how the EU moves forward for the next 5 years.