The divided French National Assembly on Thursday kept a centrist member of French President Emmanuel Macron’s party as president after a chaotic early election produced a hung legislature.
French National Assembly President Yael Braun-Pivet, 53, has been at the head of the National Assembly since 2022 and she retained her post on Thursday after three rounds of votes in the lower house of parliament.
She received the support of Macron’s centrist allies and of some conservative lawmakers seeking to prevent her leftist contender from getting the job. Braun-Pivet won 220 votes, while communist lawmaker Andre Chassaigne got 207.
Photo: AFP
The parliamentary election earlier this month resulted in a split between three major political blocs: the New Popular Front leftist coalition, Macron’s centrist allies and the far-right National Rally party. None of them won an outright majority.
“We need to get along with each other, to cooperate. We need to be able to seek compromises,” Braun-Pivet told lawmakers in a speech following her election as president. “You will always find me by your side to do this, to dialogue with you, to innovate with you, to find that new path that the National Assembly must take.”
Thursday’s opening session of the lower house of parliament came two days after Macron accepted the resignation of French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and other ministers, but asked them to handle affairs in a caretaker capacity until a new government is appointed, as France prepares to host the Paris Olympics at the end of the month.
Leaders of the New Popular Front on Thursday evening again urged Macron to turn to them to form the new government, insisting they won the most seats in the assembly.
Yet the members of the coalition, which includes the hard-left France Unbowed, the socialists, the greens and the communists, are still feuding among themselves over whom to choose as their prime ministerial candidate.
Chassaigne, who was the joint candidate of the New Popular Front, criticized the job of president going to Macron’s centrists as a vote “stolen by an unnatural alliance.”
It “gives us even more strength,” he added.
Chassaigne blamed conservative members of the Republicans for participating in “tactics that led to not changing anything,” describing the move as “giving nausea.”
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