France is voting in key elections that could see a historic far-right win or a hung parliament

France is voting in key elections that could see a historic far-right win or a hung parliament
Sunday’s snap elections in this nuclear-armed nation have potential impact on the war in Ukraine and Europe’s economic stability. (AP)
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Updated 07 July 2024
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France is voting in key elections that could see a historic far-right win or a hung parliament

France is voting in key elections that could see a historic far-right win or a hung parliament
  • Sunday’s snap elections in this nuclear-armed nation have potential impact on the war in Ukraine and Europe’s economic stability

PARIS: Voting has begun in mainland France on Sunday in pivotal runoff elections that could hand a historic victory to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally and its inward-looking, anti-immigrant vision — or produce a hung parliament and political deadlock.
French President Emmanuel Macron took a huge gamble in dissolving parliament and calling for the elections after his centrists were trounced in European elections on June 9.
The snap elections in this nuclear-armed nation will influence the war in Ukraine, global diplomacy and Europe’s economic stability, and they’re almost certain to undercut President Emmanuel Macron for the remaining three years of his presidency.
The first round on June 30 saw the largest gains ever for the anti-immigration, nationalist National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen.
A bit over 49 million people are registered to vote in the elections, which will determine which party controls the 577-member National Assembly, France’s influential lower house of parliament, and who will be prime minister. If support is further eroded for Macron’s weak centrist majority, he will be forced to share power with parties opposed to most of his pro-business, pro-European Union policies.
Voters at a Paris polling station were acutely aware of the the far-reaching consequences for France and beyond.
“The individual freedoms, tolerance and respect for others is what at stake today,” said Thomas Bertrand, a 45-year-old voter who works in advertising.
Racism and antisemitism have marred the electoral campaign, along with Russian cybercampaigns, and more than 50 candidates reported being physically attacked — highly unusual for France. The government is deploying 30,000 police on voting day.
The heightened tensions come while France is celebrating a very special summer: Paris is about to host exceptionally ambitious Olympic Games, the national soccer team reached the semifinal of the Euro 2024 championship, and the Tour de France is racing around the country alongside the Olympic torch.
As of noon local time, turnout was at 26.63 percent, according to France’s interior ministry, slightly higher than the 25.90 percent reported at the same time during the first round last Sunday.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal cast his ballot in the Paris suburb of Vanves Sunday morning.
Macron is expected to vote later Sunday morning in the seaside town of La Touquet. Le Pen is not voting, because her district in northern France is not holding a second round after she won the seat outright last week. Across France, 76 other candidates secured seats in the first round, including 39 from her National Rally and 32 from the leftist New Popular Front alliance. Two candidates from Macron’s centrists list also won their seats in the first round.
The elections wrap up Sunday at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) in mainland France and on the island of Corsica. Initial polling projections are expected Sunday night, with early official results expected late Sunday and early Monday.
Voters residing in the Americas and in France’s overseas territories of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyana and French Polynesia voted on Saturday.
The elections could leave France with its first far-right government since the Nazi occupation in World War II if the National Rally wins an absolute majority and its 28-year-old leader Jordan Bardella becomes prime minister. The party came out on top in the previous week’s first-round voting, followed by a coalition of center-left, hard-left and Green parties, and Macron’s centrist alliance.
Pierre Lubin, a 45-year-old business manager, was worried about whether the elections would produce an effective government.
“This is a concern for us,” Lubin said. “Will it be a technical government or a coalition government made up of (various) political forces?”
The outcome remains highly uncertain. Polls between the two rounds suggest that the National Rally may win the most seats in the 577-seat National Assembly but fall short of the 289 seats needed for a majority. That would still make history, if a party with historic links to xenophobia and downplaying the Holocaust, and long seen as a pariah, becomes France’s biggest political force.
If it wins the majority, Macron would be forced to share power with a prime minister who deeply disagrees with the president’s domestic and foreign policies, in an awkward arrangement known in France as “cohabitation.”
Another possibility is that no party has a majority, resulting in a hung parliament. That could prompt Macron to pursue coalition negotiations with the center-left or name a technocratic government with no political affiliations.
No matter what happens, Macron’s centrist camp will be forced to share power. Many of his alliances’ candidates lost in the first round or withdrew, meaning it doesn’t have enough people running to come anywhere close to the majority he had in 2017 when he was was first elected president, or the plurality he got in the 2022 legislative vote.
Both would be unprecedented for modern France, and make it more difficult for the European Union’s No. 2 economy to make bold decisions on arming Ukraine, reforming labor laws or reducing its huge deficit. Financial markets have been jittery since Macron surprised even his closest allies in June by announcing snap elections after the National Rally won the most seats for France in European Parliament elections.
Regardless of what happens, Macron said he won’t step down and will stay president until his term ends in 2027.
Many French voters, especially in small towns and rural areas, are frustrated with low incomes and a Paris political leadership seen as elitist and unconcerned with workers’ day-to-day struggles. National Rally has connected with those voters, often by blaming immigration for France’s problems, and has built up broad and deep support over the past decade.
Le Pen has softened many of the party’s positions — she no longer calls for quitting NATO and the EU — to make it more electable. But the party’s core far-right values remain. It wants a referendum on whether being born in France is enough to merit citizenship, to curb rights of dual citizens, and give police more freedom to use weapons.
With the uncertain outcome looming over the high-stakes elections, Valerie Dodeman, 55-year-old legal expert said she is pessimistic about the future of France.
“No matter what happens, I think this election will leave people disgruntled on all sides,” Dodeman said.


Top immigration enforcement official reassigned amid frustrations over mass deportation effort

Updated 32 sec ago
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Top immigration enforcement official reassigned amid frustrations over mass deportation effort

Top immigration enforcement official reassigned amid frustrations over mass deportation effort
The statement made no mention of why Vitello, a career ICE official with more than two decades on the job, was reassigned or who his replacement will be
White House officials have expressed frustration with the pace of deportations of people in the country illegally

WASHINGTON: The top official in charge of carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass deportations agenda has been reassigned amid concerns that the deportation effort isn’t moving fast enough.
Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement Friday that Caleb Vitello, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was “no longer in an administrative role, but is instead overseeing all field and enforcement operations: finding, arresting, and deporting illegal aliens, which is a major priority of the President and Secretary (Kristi) Noem.”
The statement made no mention of why Vitello, a career ICE official with more than two decades on the job, was reassigned or who his replacement will be. But White House officials have expressed frustration with the pace of deportations of people in the country illegally.
The decision comes a little over one month into the new administration, showing how important immigration and carrying out mass deportations are to the Trump administration.
ICE — specifically, its Enforcement and Removal Operations arm — is the key agency tasked with carrying out the Republican president’s pledge of mass deportations of people in the country illegally during his second term.
Last week Tom Homan, the White House border czar tasked with carrying out Trump’s immigration agenda across the federal government, said arrests inside the US — as opposed to people arrested as they’re crossing the border — are about three times higher than they were this time last year, under President Joe Biden. But he said it still wasn’t enough.
“I’m not satisfied,” Homan said. “We got to get more.”
At the time, Homan also said he had talked to ICE leadership about the number of people who had been released from immigration custody. From now on, he said, no one would be released without ICE leadership signing off.
“The number of releases was unacceptable,” Homan said, “and that’s been fixed.”
Homan spoke the same day that two top immigration enforcement officials were reassigned.
Vitello is a career ICE official, who most recently was the assistant director for firearms and tactical programs before being tapped as the acting director.
He’s also served on the National Security Council and held positions at ICE directly related to the agency’s enforcement operations.
ICE has not had a Senate-confirmed leader in years.

Ex-Trump aide’s ‘Nazi ideology’ salute sparks French party leader’s protest

Ex-Trump aide’s ‘Nazi ideology’ salute sparks French party leader’s protest
Updated 12 min 3 sec ago
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Ex-Trump aide’s ‘Nazi ideology’ salute sparks French party leader’s protest

Ex-Trump aide’s ‘Nazi ideology’ salute sparks French party leader’s protest
  • Jordan Bardella, president of France’s anti-immigration party RN, was supposed to speak at a CPAC event in the US
  • Trump ally Steve Bannon reacted with fury to Bardella’s withdrawal, calling him “unworthy of leading France"

WASHINGTON: Accusations of an apparent Nazi salute by American conservative firebrand and Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon at a Washington convention led a French far-right leader to withdraw from the event on Friday.
Jordan Bardella, president of France’s anti-immigration National Rally (RN) party canceled a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) over a “gesture alluding to Nazi ideology.”
Bannon, a former adviser to US President Donald Trump, briefly held out a stiffened arm with his palm down at the conference on Thursday night as he called on the audience to “fight, fight, fight.”
He reacted with fury to Bardella’s withdrawal, calling the French politician “a little boy, not a man” and “unworthy of leading France,” in a video interview with French weekly Le Point.
He insisted his gesture was a “wave” that he has frequently used at conferences.
The incident came a month after Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and a key Trump ally, also made a hand gesture that drew comparisons to a Nazi salute.
Musk dismissed criticism at the time, saying on his X platform: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”

Bardella was not present when Bannon — one of the masterminds of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign — made the gesture.
“I had been invited... to make a speech on the links between the United States and France, as well as the recent electoral dynamic of patriot parties in Europe,” Bardella said in a statement.
“Yesterday, while I was not present in the room, one of the speakers out of provocation allowed himself a gesture alluding to Nazi ideology. I therefore took the immediate decision to cancel my speech that had been scheduled this afternoon,” he said.
An adviser to Bardella confirmed to AFP that he was speaking about Bannon.
Bardella, 29, took over from Marine Le Pen as RN leader in 2022, but the two remain close allies.
The RN has in the past been accused of anti-Semitism and Le Pen has worked to make the party more acceptable.
It won a record number of parliament seats in an election last year and Le Pen is expected to be a strong contender in a 2027 presidential election.
Bannon has supported European nationalist parties such as the RN but also frequently courted controversy.
He spent nearly four months in federal prison last year for contempt of a Congress inquiry into the 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

“He’s unworthy,” Bannon said of Bardella.
“If he canceled it over what the mainstream media said about the speech, he didn’t listen to the speech. If that’s true he’s unworthy to lead France. He’s a boy not a man,” Bannon said in the interview released by Le Point.
Bannon said he did “that exact same wave” at a conference of Le Pen’s party in France seven years ago.
“If he’s that worried about it and wets himself like a little child then he’s unworthy and will never lead France.”
The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish activist group, did not mention Bannon’s gesture but said in a post that Bannon has a “long and disturbing history of stoking antisemitism and hate, threatening violence, and empowering extremists.”
It added: “We are not surprised, but are concerned about the normalization of this behavior.”
 


Swedish police apprehend three men near Israeli embassy

Swedish police apprehend three men near Israeli embassy
Updated 21 February 2025
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Swedish police apprehend three men near Israeli embassy

Swedish police apprehend three men near Israeli embassy
  • The three men were suspected of planning to attack the embassy
  • The arrests were made near the embassy, but not inside the compound itself

OSLO: Swedish police said on Friday they have apprehended three men near the Israeli embassy in Stockholm on suspicion of preparing to commit violent crime, but said it was too early to say whether the diplomatic mission had been a target.
Swedish broadcaster TV4, citing unnamed sources, reported that the three men were suspected of planning to attack the embassy.
“We are unable to comment on the potential motive,” police spokesperson Susanna Rinaldo told Reuters.
The arrests were made near the embassy, but not inside the compound itself, she said without elaborating.
The suspects will now be interrogated, Rinaldo said.
Swedish police last year stepped up security around Israeli and Jewish interests in the country following a shooting near Israel’s embassy.


Man seriously injured in attack at Berlin Holocaust memorial

Man seriously injured in attack at Berlin Holocaust memorial
Updated 21 February 2025
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Man seriously injured in attack at Berlin Holocaust memorial

Man seriously injured in attack at Berlin Holocaust memorial
  • Reports say police were carrying out a manhunt for the perpetrator

BERLIN: An assailant seriously injured a man in an attack at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial on Friday evening, police said. German media reported that the man was stabbed.
Police said they were investigating the attack at the memorial, a field of 2,700 gray concrete slabs near the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of Berlin. It is also located near the US Embassy.
There was no indication yet of motive for the attack.
Berlin police said the victim was seriously injured around 6 p.m. and taken to a hospital. The German newspaper Tagesspiegel reported that the man was injured in a stabbing, citing police sources.
Another newspaper, Berliner Zeitung reported the same.
Police said they were attending to the witnesses who saw the attack, while the newspapers reported that police were carrying out a manhunt for the perpetrator.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a memorial in Berlin to the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust.


The man accused of trying to kill author Salman Rushdie is found guilty of attempted murder

The man accused of trying to kill author Salman Rushdie is found guilty of attempted murder
Updated 21 February 2025
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The man accused of trying to kill author Salman Rushdie is found guilty of attempted murder

The man accused of trying to kill author Salman Rushdie is found guilty of attempted murder
  • Rushdie was the key witness during seven days of testimony, describing in graphic detail his life-threatening injuries and long and painful recovery
  • Matar, sitting at the defense table, looked down but had no obvious reaction when the jury delivered the verdict

NEW YORK: A New Jersey man was convicted Friday of attempted murder for stabbing author Salman Rushdie multiple times on a New York lecture stage in 2022.
Jurors, who deliberated for less than two hours, also found Hadi Matar, 27, guilty of assault for wounding a man who was on stage with Rushdie at the time.
Matar ran onto the stage at the Chautauqua Institution where Rushdie was about to speak on Aug. 12, 2022, and stabbed him more than a dozen times before a live audience. The attack left the 77-year-old prizewinning novelist blind in one eye.
Rushdie was the key witness during seven days of testimony, describing in graphic detail his life-threatening injuries and long and painful recovery.
Matar, sitting at the defense table, looked down but had no obvious reaction when the jury delivered the verdict. As he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, he quietly uttered, “Free Palestine,” echoing comments he has frequently made while entering and leaving the trial.
The judge set sentencing for April 23. Matar could receive up to 25 years in prison.
His public defender, Nathaniel Barone, said Matar was disappointed but also well-prepared for the verdict.
District Attorney Jason Schmidt played a slow-motion video of the attack for the jury Friday during his closing argument, pointing out the assailant as he emerged from the audience, walked up a staircase to the stage and broke into a run toward Rushdie.
“I want you to look at the unprovoked nature of this attack,” Schmidt said. “I want you to look at the targeted nature of the attack. There were a lot of people around that day but there was only one person who was targeted.”
Assistant public defender Andrew Brautigan told the jury that prosecutors have not proved that Matar intended to kill Rushdie. The distinction is important for an attempted-murder conviction.
“You will agree something bad happened to Mr. Rushdie, but you don’t know what Mr. Matar’s conscious objective was,” Brautigan said. “The testimony you have heard doesn’t establish anything more than a chaotic noisy outburst that occurred that injured Mr. Rushdie.”
Matar had with him knives, not a gun or bomb, his attorneys have said previously. And in response to testimony that the injuries were life-threatening, they have noted that Rushdie’s heart and lungs were uninjured.
Schmidt said while it’s not possible to read Matar’s mind, “it’s foreseeable that if you’re going to stab someone 10 or 15 times about the face and neck, it’s going to result in a fatality.”
Rushdie, 77, was the key witness during testimony that began last week. The Booker Prize-winning author told jurors he thought he was dying when a masked stranger ran onto the stage and stabbed and slashed at him until being tackled by bystanders. Rushdie showed jurors his now-blinded right eye, usually hidden behind a darkened eyeglass lens.
Schmidt reminded jurors about the testimony of a trauma surgeon, who said Rushdie’s injuries would have been fatal without quick treatment.
He also slowed down video showing Matar approaching the seated Rushdie from behind and reaching around him to stab at his torso with a knife. Rushdie raises his arms and rises from his seat, walking and stumbling for a few steps with Matar hanging on, swinging and stabbing until they both fall and are surrounded by onlookers who rush in to separate them.
Rushdie is seen flailing on the ground, waving a hand covered in bright red blood. Schmidt freezes on a frame showing Rushdie, his face also bloodied, as he’s surrounded by people.
“We’ve shown you intent,” Schmidt said.
The recordings also picked up the gasps and screams from audience members who had been seated to hear Rushdie speak with City of Asylum Pittsburgh founder Henry Reese about keeping writers safe. Reese suffered a gash to his forehead, leading to the assault charge against Matar.
From the witness stand, institution staff and others who were present on the day of the attack pointed to Matar as the assailant.
Stabbed and slashed more than a dozen times in the head, throat, torso, thigh and hand, Rushdie spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital and more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation center. He detailed his long and painful recovery in his 2024 memoir, “Knife.”
Throughout the trial, Matar often took notes with a pen and sometimes laughed or smiled with his defense team during breaks in testimony. His lawyers declined to call any witnesses of their own and Matar did not testify in his defense.
Public Defender Nathaniel Barone said Matar likely would have faced a lesser charge of assault were it not for Rushdie’s celebrity.
“We think that it became an attempted murder because of the notoriety of the alleged victim in the case,” Barone told reporters after testimony concluded Thursday. “That’s been it from the very beginning. It’s been nothing more, nothing less. And it’s for publicity purposes. It’s for self-interest purposes.”
A separate federal indictment alleges that Matar, of Fairview, New Jersey, was motivated to attack Rushdie by a 2006 speech in which the leader of the militant group Hezbollah endorsed a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death. Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued the fatwa in 1989 after publication of the novel “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims consider blasphemous.
Rushdie spent years in hiding. But after Iran announced that it would not enforce the decree, he had traveled freely over the past quarter century.
A trial on the federal terrorism-related charges will be scheduled in US District Court in Buffalo.