Centrist presidential candidate of La République En Marche (Republic on the Move) Emmanuel Macron on Sunday, April 24, emerged the President of the Republic of France for a second five-year tenure in the Elysee Palace – becoming the first incumbent French state leader to win a re-election bid after Jacques Chirac in 2002.
Running on the platform of En Marche – a centrist and pro-European political party, 44-year-old Emmanuel Macron triumphed over Far-right leader and one-time opponent Marine Le Pen, of the Rassemblement National (National Rally) party in the run-off presidential election. Convincingly, he led the charge polling 58.5 percent of the ballots to emerge, against 41.5 percent garnered by his rival Le Pen. The final round of voting recorded an abstention rate of 28 percent; the highest in a presidential run-off since 1969.
Commendably, the Far-right won their highest ever vote in a Presidential election. Nevertheless, the ballot garnered on Sunday by the National Rally did less to change the narrative keeping the political spectrum and its top representative – Marine Le Pen, away from the highest position in French politics. The Far-right leader has now trailed and failed consecutively, in all three attempts to get into the Elysee Palace.
Recall, the first round of voting was held on April 10, in which both Macron and Le Pen led the field and ranked high above other candidates, setting the stage for the second and final round of the 2022 French Presidential election.
Both candidates made it to the final round in 2017, where Macron overwhelmingly edged past his far-right challenger to clinch the French presidency, and with a renewed mandate in 2022, he will go on to shoulder the responsibility of the French Republic and by extension the European Union for the next five years.
“I want to thank all of the French people, men, and women, who at the first and second round of these Presidential elections placed their trust in me, so together we can undertake our project to make France more independent, to make Europe stronger and through investments and changes, continue to implement change relevant to everyone,” Macron said in his victory speech at the Champ de Mars in Paris.
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Born in December 1977, Emmanuel Macron won the French Presidency by a landslide victory in 2017 his first, at the age of 39. His emergence to the French presidency was of high significance as he became the 8th and youngest-ever elected President of the French Republic.
A former investment banker, Macron worked in the French cabinet as Minister of Economy, Industry, and Digital Affairs between 2014 and 2016.
The En Marche party under the banner of which he ran in double succession for the French presidency and won convincingly is a product of his political effort and the party’s dominance in French politics today takes a greater course, at the expense of the traditional governing parties – the Socialist and the Republicans.
Before the formation of his political movement, Macron was a member of the Left-wing Socialist party between 2006 and 2009 and he was appointed Deputy Secretary-General of the Elysee Palace in 2012 by Francois Hollande, becoming one of the key advisers to the former French President.
Ahead of his resignation from the French cabinet in August 2016, and amid a deterioration of relations with the Francois Holland-led administration, Emmanuel Macron established the En Marche party as a liberal and progressive political movement in April 2016. In the face of a sharp division in the politics of France, Macron considers the En Marche party as a uniting force, steering a middle course between the Left and the Right spectrum of French politics.
Renewed Mandate
Having earned the trust of the French electorate for a second and final term at the Elysee Palace Emmanuel Macron is set to grasp the nettle and deliver on his campaign promises.
Currently, the West-European country is engulfed with several drawbacks, and on the table of the Presidency are a number of socio-economic and political issues of wide reach locally, within the European Union, and on the global stage.
His first tenure was marked by a series of protests and political controversy ranging from the Yellow Vest movement triggered by rising fuel taxes in 2018 followed by other violent anti-government demonstrations and the 2022 ‘Mckinsey Affair’, where he came under fire for the use of public money on private consultancy firms.
In the run-up to his second term bid, Macron promised the French electorate, more social justice and pledged to focus on gender equality. He also vowed to support and improve the purchasing power of the French citizenry amid fast-rising inflation in the country. Captured among his campaign pledge are environmental protection, the building of more nuclear reactors, and a fight against ‘Islamic separatism’.
Continentally, the war in Ukraine is of big security challenge to the European Union. Holding the presidency of the Council of the EU, and overseeing the second-largest economy in Europe, Macron has a duty to ensure that the bloc is balanced in all respect while it confronts the large and steady influx of Ukrainian refugees into its territorial orbit.
In the International community, nuclear-armed France remains a key player. The involvement of the French government in the war in Syria on the side of the US-led coalition against the government of Bashar al-Assad is not off the table. Relations between Paris and Bamako hit a new low by the day since the pull-out of French troops from the West-African state in February 2022. Getting the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal back on track is also of utmost importance to France and the role of Paris as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council cannot be overemphasized.
Come May 14, Emmanuel Macron renews his term in office, and much more is expected of him from all sides as President of the French Republic overseeing the affairs of over 67 million French citizens.
Source: The Informant247 Naija News