Macron

For the first time in the six decades since Charles de Gaulle restored some semblance of order in French politics, neither of the two major parties are included in the crucial presidential run-off election. The runoff will be held a little more than a week from today.

In the French multi-party system, a second-round of voting is held if no candidate wins more than half of the popular vote. This ensures that the person who occupies the powerful presidency enjoys manifest majority support.

We should have adopted this procedure when the framers of the 1987 Constitution decided to retain the presidential form while encouraging a multi-party system. We did not. That is a failing that our political culture subsequently compensated for.

Under the present constitutional framework, we have never had a president with majority support. All we’ve had was a series of minority presidents – although, thanks to the magic of turncoatism, each of them ended up with a congressional “supermajority” and a dominant ruling party. All post-election surveys likewise report a vast majority support for the eventual winner.

In France, traditionally, party identification is not to be trifled with. Many voters cast their ballots for only one political party through their lifetimes.

This is why the recent presidential vote was so different. The runoff election features a candidate from a far-right party that seems permanently on the fringe and a very young politician with a “movement” instead of a party.

Emmanuel Macron, a 39-year-old running on his first election, won under a quarter of the vote. He is running under the banner of a new movement called En Marche (On the Move).

Before deciding to throw his hat into the electoral ring last year, Macron worked for the socialist government of Hollande. For the second round, he has drawn the endorsements of major leaders of the Socialist Party. Senior leaders of the other establishment party, the Republicans, offered their endorsements as well. Macron’s rise in French politics is rightly described as meteoric.

Marine Le Pen succeeded her father as leader of the far-right National Front party. This political strand has always been a fringe player in French politics. This time around, however, given the general discontent over the conventional political parties and rising concern over the flow of refugees from the war-torn Middle east, French voters are looking for an alternative.

The National Front has always been a nationalist party. In this age of terrorism, mainly by Islamic militants, the far-right has gained more adherents. Le Pen benefits from that, as well as from the many scandals plaguing the leading political lights of the mainstream parties.

It helps too that the French left is in total disarray. Socialist Party candidate Benoit Harmon took only 6.35% of the first round vote. Francois Hollande will probably be the last left-wing president France will have for many years. 

Stark

The differences between Macron and Le Pen could not be starker.

While Macron is a staunch supporter of France playing a central role in a united Europe, Le Pen wants the EU to be reinvented. Macron is the free market candidate, more reassuring to business. Le Pen is seen as a statist candidate who will use political controls to force companies to hire French workers ahead of foreigners. This is her version of a “France First” policy that makes Le Pen attractive to someone like Donald Trump. Her solution to unemployment is to cut the workweek to 35 hours and bring down the retirement age to 60.

Should Le Pen win, she promised to hold a referendum on France’s membership in the European Union. That opens the door to something akin to the bothersome “Brexit” that will certainly damage the UK’s economic standing. 

Le Pen, like Trump, introduces certain nebulous economic concepts. One of these is the concept of “intelligent protectionism” where French firms will be favored in awarding public contracts. Macron is staunchly favoring free trade policies and more conventional market stimulus measures to grow the economy and bring down unemployment.

There should be little wonder that European markets rose after the results of the first round elections showed Macron taking the lead over Le Pen. The euro also firmed up after the political results. The same consequences happened last month when Dutch voters chose a mainstream candidate over a far-right rival.

With the mainstream parties (and their constituencies) regrouping behind Macron’s candidacy, it is nearly certain he will take the presidency. Unlike the US where someone like Trump may lose the popular vote and yet win at the Electoral College, the French president is chosen entirely on the popular vote. Surveys are now showing that Macron will defeat Le Pen by a landslide.

While Macron is a political maverick, his policies are pretty mainstream. He is identified as a “centrist” candidate, able to unite a large swathe of the population on the basis of familiar policy solutions. While Le Pen will push up uncertainties, Macron (his renegade ways notwithstanding) will reduce uncertainties to the delight of mainstream businesses.

When Macron finally wins the second round of voting, he will help dispel anxieties over the possibility that the democracies will tumble like dominos in the face of rising discontent and sharper economic polarities. After ‘Brexit” won in the UK and Trump won in the US on the back of regions and communities marginalized by globalization, there was fear of an emerging trend where we see the most uncompetitive voting for protectionism.

The elections in the Netherlands and France reassure us sanity will prevail.