PARIS — Backroom deals, blacklists and bitter duels. Political and personal intrigue has wormed its way into today’s final round of French legislative elections.
President Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party is battling to ensure a solid majority and fulfill his vows to boost growth in Europe and redefine the presidency as one beholden to the people.
Barring surprises, the Socialists and their allies should win enough seats to control the crucial 577-seat lower house of parliament, after a strong showing in the first round of the ballot a week ago. But to get an absolute majority guaranteeing a free hand to govern, which requires at least 289 seats, the party is trying to fend off conservatives who dominated parliament under former President Nicolas Sarkozy.
They’re also trying to shame those in the mainstream right who are cutting vote-getting deals with the extreme-right, anti-immigrant National Front, which is wrangling for its first real presence in parliament in more than a quarter century.
“The right no longer knows where it lives. It no longer knows what it is,” said Economy Minister Pierre Moscovici this week on France 2 TV. “It’s lost its markers, its identity, its values.”
Polling firms have calculated that the National Front could get up to three seats in the National Assembly, a symbolic victory. The newly robust National Front, which wants to abandon the euro currency and stop immigration, is on a roll. Its leader, Marine Le Pen, has revamped the party to bury its reputation as racist and anti-Semitic inherited under the reign of party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen.
