He presented himself as a candidate for the party of Emmanuel Macron and his allies in the fifth constituency of the French abroad, including residents of Spain
Manuel Valls, former prime minister of France and former city councilor of Barcelona, was eliminated in the first round of France’s parliamentary elections. Valls, 59, ran for the party of Emmanuel Macron and his allies in the fifth constituency of the French abroad, which includes residents of Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Monaco.
Valls hoped to win the seat to return to French politics after a four-year absence due to his Catalan adventure. The former socialist resigned from his French deputy seat in October 2018 and presented himself with Ciudadans to the mayor of Barcelona, his hometown, in May 2019. He failed to become mayor, although he was elected councilor. He resigned in August 2021, halfway through the term, after two years in office.
“Goodbye Twitter,” Valls wrote on this social network, after learning that he had been eliminated in the first round after receiving 15.85% of the vote. The former prime minister immediately closed his Twitter account.
Valls’ defeat was applauded by the left. From the “until never” of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La Francia Insumisa, to the “goodbye (in Spanish) Manuel Valls” of the ecologist-mayor of Grenoble, Éric Piolle, who called the former socialist of “betrayal” blames the left.
Bilbao’s Union of Centrists and Ecologists (UCE) candidate José Miguel Sánchez Pérez was also eliminated, who was the sixth of 12 candidates running in that constituency.
The seat of the fifth constituency of French expatriates will be contested in the second round by Renaud Le Berre, the candidate of the union of left parties (Nupes), and outgoing deputy Stéphane Vojetta, a dissident candidate from Macron’s party.
Vojetta refused to withdraw to make way for Valls, who was nominated by the president as the party’s official candidate. And he faced election-defying Paris. Vojetta has already said that if he is re-elected as a deputy, he will join the presidential majority in the National Assembly.
French expats voted around the world a week earlier than their compatriots. Parliamentary elections will be held in France on 12 and 19 June.
In nine of the eleven constituencies of French residents abroad, a duel will take place between the candidate of Macron’s party and the candidate of the left-wing parties’ union (Nupes), which is La Francia Insumisa (the French Podemos) and socialists , bringing together environmentalists and communists.
The Ensemble (Together) coalition, which unites Macron’s party and its allies, took the first-round lead in eight of the 11 constituencies of French residents abroad.
The Left will be present in ten of the second rounds to be held in the eleven expatriate constituencies. In 2017, the left-wing parties, operating separately, only managed to qualify for the second round in five of the eleven constituencies.
Five days before the first round of the parliamentary election, Macronists are concerned about the rise of the left in voting intent polls and the possibility that Macron, president-elect in April, will not win an absolute majority, 289 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly.
According to the latest poll by the Ifop Institute, Macron’s party and its allies would win between 275 and 310 seats; and the left-wing union (Nupes) between 170 and 205 seats. The Republicans (moderate right) would get between 35 and 55 delegates. Regrouping National, Marine Le Pen’s far-right party), would win between 20 and 50 seats, which would be a big jump from the six deputies it currently has in the lower house.
For now, the polls rule out the scenario that the left-wing trade union (Nupes) gains an absolute majority in the parliamentary elections. Mélenchon dreams of this happening, which he calculates would force Macron to appoint him prime minister as he would be the party with the most seats in the National Assembly.
Source: La Verdad
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