French left-wing leader defends police-killing chants and throws in threats of his own in the final days before France goes to the polls in round one of Emmanuel Macron’s big-risk snap parliamentary elections.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the left-wing leader who is perhaps the most visible face of the New Popular Front (NFP) coalition bringing in the whole spectrum from pro-Europe centrism to full-blooded communists laughed off chants by his supporters at an anti-right wing rally. Making reference to the populist party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella polled to come first in the elections, National Rally (RN), the demonstrators had chanted “A dead cop is one vote less for the RN”.
Mélenchon replied “It’s absurd… but We still have the right to laugh”. He later clarified his point, asserting “Not about the deaths of people, of course”. French broadsheet Le Figaro noted his insouciant reply set off a wave of concern, citing former police union spokesman — and now RN politician — Matthieu Valet who said: “He respects nothing, not even those who died for the [country]. He doesn’t even hide his hatred of the cops anymore”.
Jordan Bardella, the leader of the RN Parliamentary faction who hopes to walk out of this election as Prime Minister, said: “The far left is defending a new right: that of being able to insult our police officers and laugh at their deaths… Mr. Mélenchon and his friends no longer have any moral limits”. President Macron’s interior minister Gérald Darmanin, who banned several “extremist” groups this week, responded to Mélenchon: “the far left once again infamous in the hatred of the police. How can sincere left-wing voters accept this?
Spit on the coffin of our police officers and gendarmes for a few votes… [this makes me want to] vomit.”
Mélenchon has also obliquely threatened “resistance” to the result if RN win, and President Emmanuel Macron has outright warned of “civil war” from the outcome of the election that he called. This week, the left-wing leader wrote: “If the RN wins the elections, we will enter into moral and legal resistance… The French cannot say that we did not warn them.”
France will go to the polls on Sunday for the first of two rounds of voting to select their next Parliament. Under the French system, the first round is a knock-out, with the two highest performing candidates for each constituency facing off again a week later with the other challengers eliminated. The system, baked into the French Fifth Republic is praised by some for being particularly hostile to candidates from outside the mainstream, allowing tactical voting in the second round.
As things stand, polling favours Le Pen’s RN, while Mélenchon’s omnibus leftist coalition trails in second. Embarrassingly for French President Emmanuel Macron, who called the election in the wake of his damning performance in Europe-wide elections earlier this month, he is due to scrape in at third place.
If RN is able to command the French Parliament, it seems likely they would be able to install their lead man Bardella as Prime Minister. While it is not novel for France to have an opposed Presidency and government, the degree of ideological separation between the two men is vast and could precipitate a constitutional crisis.