voting begins for the next president of the republic 12 candidates are running for the top seat but the top two are the talk of town that is emmanuel macron and marine le pen however the war in ukraine has overshadowed the presidential race the voter turnout in the first round of the french presidential election on sunday was 25.5 by midday which is below the 28.5 rate during the 2017 polls visuals on your screen show far-right leader le pen voting in first round of presidential election french far-right shoe zamor also voted during the first round of elections le pen is posing an unexpected threat to president emmanuel macron's re-election hopes she was the closest rival to the incumbent in 2017 as well let's see what has changed in the last five years two leaders with two different ideologies one is a centrist the other is far right macron is seeking to win re-election and this is le pen's last bid to run for the top seat let's come to the promises that the two have made starting the economy and employment macron and le pen have both promised tax cuts but the incumbent has also said that his government will toughen security laws against growing terrorism on the other hand le pen was kept her focus on domestic issues like increasing social benefits for the french people macron has also vowed to gradually raise the retirement age from 62 to 65. this is being seen as being unpopular with voters already facing a cost of living crunch on the other hand the far-right candidate plans to exempt companies from tax only if they raise the minimum wage by 10 percent next we come to immigration a core issue in this year's election le pen is known for her anti-immigration stance but now she has promised to halt abuse of the right to asylum le pen plans to bring in a referendum on restricting immigration whereas macron has decided to strengthen the country's free borders to eliminate illegal migration the french president is also in talks to form a new group to get rid of extremism the body will include clergy lay men and women he wishes to give islam a french makeover on the other hand le pen has taken an eye-raising pledge to ban islamic hijab in public areas remember full-face veils are already banned in front interestingly the war in ukraine also took a front seat during the last few weeks in some ways it even appended the presidential campaigning for macron he is juggling a war in europe with election at home in the first few days of the war macron's attempts to stop russia from invading was lauded and his ratings showed that but within 15 days something changed opinion polls showed a reverse trend macron's ratings slumped and le pen's ratings soared this was because the 2017 runner shifted her focus from ukraine to issues at home and people gave a green light to her priority around 48.7 million people are eligible for the vote but experts say a lower voter turnout is expected in 2017 the country reported a record abstention rate with 22 percent the polls will close at 8 pm local time the first exit polls will be published right after for more details on this story and what might be the future ahead for france political analyst morgan fret malker is joining us live from paris morgan thank you very much for joining us and welcome to we on thank you happy to be here what do you make of the voting so far and your predictions perhaps the most notable uh element is obviously the fact that there's a very low turnout it was expected um all the opinion polls showed that uh turnout risks to be the lowest ever this year on the presidential election presidential elections are usually very important events in france's political life and the fact that turnout is very low shows a very deep in satisfaction with the political offering at the moment in france what is bringing or driving this voter apathy in this french or crucial elections in france i wouldn't call it apathy i would call it a protest abstention um i think that people are not going to vote because they feel like um none of the big candidates represent their interests um we've had a lot of populism in the in the campaigns in the broader sense of the word populism um i i understand um i mean the populism in the sense that candidates have tried to catch the the hot topics and um and adapt their language uh according to um to what they thought that um their consistencies wanted to hear instead of focusing on substance issues and people are seeing this and um they're saying either they want to vote for the small candidates but they're being told that it's useless so they they don't go and they don't vote will this uh voter turn out low voter turnout have a challenge to the outcome of this elections well low turnout theoretically would benefit marine le pen because traditionally far-right far-right parties benefit from from low turnout because their electors are uh more active um but this time this time i would say that the the victim of their turnout is not only the mainstream candidates macron but also the left especially um the left has been really the the campaigns on the left have been driven by um the question of voting useful or not useful voting useful being voting for the only leftist candidates that might have a chance to go through to the second round or to vote for the small candidates uh to the left and um in this in this sort of dilemma if people don't go voting then it's the left that's losing morgan critics argue that this presidential race could become a cliffhanger why is this election being considered a tough test for current president emmanuel macron well the campaign was a bit strange because first of all macron didn't declare himself a candidate until very very late in the in the campaign it had nothing to do with ukraine it was just his strategy and this strategy um was sort of short short-circuited by the start of the war in the ukraine um where uh macon suddenly saw his um his ratings soar but this was a short-lived um short-lived advantage for for macron because a few weeks after the start of the war as the war dragged on we saw that this popularity was was fading and uh and mcconnell had still not entered the uh domestic political scene and had still not started his campaign he actually started his campaign six days before the elections and so he has a lot he had a lot to catch on if the far right candidate marine le pen unsits macron what do the french people predict of how her leadership will look like um for many years since le pen has tried to become a president the the main question um has been whether or not she and her party would have the actual uh capacity and skills to to rule because this has always been further very long this was a in a position party with no um actual ambition to rule only since the last presidential election did they position themselves as as people who might be able to actually lead the country with all the administrative um details that it entails and to the extent that mahind le pen's party has become much more normalized i think that she might be able to attract enough um human resources to to lead the country so this question is not as as important as it was before but but the main questions will remain whether or not she can could pull out the eurosceptic agenda that she has been promoting for years um we've seen that the other countries in european union have tried to pull out of the of the european union have paid a very high price for it so this is this is one of the big um question marks um other question marks will obviously be how she handles um the new situation uh vis-a-vis russia and um and other than that in terms of her economic program social economic program i think there are not a lot of surprises minor pen is the the candidate of small business owners um agricultural agricultural populations and some popular um popular classes and yeah she's has a slightly social program but but quite centrist in the end all things considered morgan fred mount gas carl thank you very much for your insights and for talking to eon today we on is now available in your country download the app now and get all the news on the move
Comments
Post a Comment