At least 200 candidates have withdrawn before France’s runoff election as President Emmanuel Macron and a left-wing alliance attempt to thwart the far-right, according to the media reports.
The opponents expect that by withdrawing candidacy to consolidate vote before the runoff, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party would not receive the majority of 289 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly.
At least 200 candidates have already withdrawn before Tuesday’s 6:00 pm (1600 GMT) deadline for second-round registration, almost all of them were left-wing or affiliated with Macron’s centrist party. More than 70 of the candidates who have chosen to withdraw from the campaign are from Macron’s camp, while more than 110 are from the left-wing New Popular Front.
A party official informed that a far-right candidate also resigned over an old social media image in which she was seen wearing a Nazi cap. After President Emmanuel Macron’s bet on a snap election backfired, putting his centrist camp in a meagre third place behind a created left-wing coalition, while Marine Le Pen’s RN emerged victorious in Sunday’s (June 30) first-round vote.
In the first round, just 76 lawmakers were elected outright, nearly all of them from the extremes of the right and left.mRunoff elections between two or three candidates will decide the future of the remaining 501 seats in the second round.
It was initially unclear if Macron’s allies would withdraw in favour of better-placed rival candidates from Jean-Luc Melenchon’s radical left-wing France Unbowed (LFI) party.
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