Le Pen, Valls re-elected in France, as Macron’s party claims 66 percent of vote
President Macron's La Republique En Marche secures massive majority in French parliament
France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen and former Prime Minister Manuel Valls both secured a seat in a parliamentary election that was dominated by the party of President Emmanuel Macron.
The centrist party, La Republique En Marche, which was created last year, clinched 361 seats out of 577 in the National Assembly, giving it an absolute majority following the final round of the parliamentary elections in France.
This provides Macron and his party, whose name means “Republic Onwards,” a majority in parliament to pass economic reforms that he said during his presidential campaign were necessary to end the country’s financial stagnation.
National Front, Le Pen’s anti-Muslim and Euroskeptic party, garnered eight seats in the election, an underperformance of two seats compared to the result predicted for the party in polls.
Macron won the final round of the presidential vote on May 7 with 66 percent of the vote. Le Pen received 34 percent, the best result by her party on record.
Valls, a centrist member of the Socialist Party who last year in a speech called anti-Zionism a form of anti-Semitism and who in 2009 said he has an “eternal bond” with the Jewish people because of his marriage to a Jewish woman, narrowly beat the far-left politician Jean-Luc Melenchon, who has been accused of espousing anti-Semitic rhetoric in speeches, in the Essone region in northern France. Valls won 50.3 percent of the vote there, according to FranceInter.
Meyer Habib, a lawmaker for the UDI centrist party and a former leader of the CRIF umbrella of French Jewish communities, was re-elected to parliament as the representative of the electoral 8th District, which comprises Turkey, Israel, Italy, Greece, the Vatican, San Marino and Malta.
Israel is home to more than 70,000 French citizens eligible to vote out of 111,736 throughout the district. During his campaign, Meyer has received the endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a longtime personal friend of Habib.
For the first time in history, turnout in a legislative election slumped to below 50 percent in both rounds. On Sunday, only 43 percent of voters cast ballots.
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