The French Unite to Block the Far Right in the Runoff Parliamentary Elections

The left-wing bloc won a plurality of seats in the high-turnout French runoff parliamentary elections among candidates who had cleared a certain threshold of votes. The leftists, who had moderated their positions and pledged support for Ukraine against the Russian aggression, were followed by the ruling centrist bloc that includes some center-right members, thereby blocking in an upset result the far-right from gaining the majority of seats in Parliament and holding the premiership. Many candidates in each alliance had dropped out of the runoff to allow the other bloc’s candidate who had won the most votes to prevail. The far-right anti-migrant party with a history of sympathy for and financial support from the Russian Federation, came in third after having led in the first round of elections a week ago. The center-right party did its part with a respectable fourth-place finish to help prevent the first far-right-led French government since the Vichy collaborationists with the Nazi German invaders during the Second World War, despite its leader forming an alliance with the far-right, which, as I had posted, was rejected by the conservatives’ parliamentary leaders, as the Gaullist party has a history of opposing fascism. A far-right government could have compromised the West’s unity against Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin, the ex-Soviet intelligence officer who is trying to restore the Soviet Union. The centrist President, whose term lasts three more years, had called the parliamentary elections a year early after his party lost to the far-right in the European Parliamentary elections last month. Although no party will have a majority of seats in the French Palriament, he will name a prime minister from the bloc that won the most seats, but not from the anti-Semitic far-left party within it that won the most individual seats. But even with this “cohabitation,” the French Head of State remains constitutionally powerful in the Fifth Republic. France, a great power, is an ally of the United States as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.