Snap elections to France’s National Assembly have resulted in a hung Parliament. The French don’t quite know what they want. The “pre-poll favourite” Right-wing party – National Rally – led by Marie Le Pen has scored its best result ever but has fallen short of its own expectations and the half-way mark in the National Assembly. Going into the election most pollsters had predicted that France (like much of Europe) would get its first far-Right government since World War-II.
The surprise beneficiary of voter indecision has been a coalition comprising of rancorous Far-Left and Left parties that includes one called France Unbowed led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
The Left bloc in France tripped the Right at the altar in the days leading up to the second round. Many have described the Left bloc’s “mugging” of the Right as “horse trading.” While this may not be an accurate descriptor, it is true that the Left hasn’t halted the Right through the sheer force of ideology. Instead, some deft tactical poll manoeuvres were employed, chiefly an agreement to field a consensus candidate preventing Left vote fragmentation. But the Left’s surprise showing doesn’t mean that there will be a government in place in France anytime soon. At the very least seven parties must come together to claim a majority. And, with the Centrists led by President Macron unwilling to align with the Left bloc an impasse over government formation looms large.
But even before the dust has settled in France, Left-leaning politicians and commentators in India are exulting at the fact that a far-Left coalition in France has secured the most seats in a hung house. Some experts in newspaper editorials have overtly drawn breathless parallels with the just concluded Lok Sabha elections in India. One editorialist compared the “unusual levels of sacrifice” made by the Left to cauterize the Right Wing in France to the way the INDIA bloc halted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. The “sacrifice” – code for the tactic of withdrawing multiple candidates in favour of just one consensus candidate – is being hailed as the “positive possibilities of coalition dharma” that has been necessitated by the need to protect “core democratic values” against an alleged Right-wing rewrite.
This irrational exuberance among Indian leftists reeks of bias that overlooks the considerable foibles of the French Left. It is worth asking if the French far-Left coalition is truly a defender of “core democratic values”.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who leads the very Left-wing France Unbowed, like many Indian Leftists, refuses to call the Hamas a terrorist organisation. Surely, anyone speaking up for an organisation that threatens a “river to sea” genocidal purge of Jews in West Asia cannot be aligned to “core democratic values”. And especially not in France, where, need one remind, the ideal of “fraternite” is one of the pillars holding up the very edifice of French republicanism.
Second, the Left in France infamously flirts with Islamo-fascism. It is divided over opposing the ban on the hijab, or the illegality of the application of Muslim personal laws. The Left’s reticence on this score has upset many progressive Muslims not to mention those French Constitutionalists that played a major role in the construction of the French conception of sovereignty in the 17th century. Laïcité or the complete separation of Church and State has been an important element in efforts made by the Constitutional Council to preserve the sovereignty of the French State. A dalliance with Islamo-fascism undermines this universal “democratic value”.
Third, elements on the far-Left, like Mélenchon’s party mates have expressed anti-Semitic views heightening anxiety among French Jews. This dog whistling against Jews cannot be aligned to universal “core democratic” principles either.
Moreover, this bare-faced espousal of the Far Left’s cause by Indian Leftists ignores that Marie-Le Pen’s National Rally (that has considerably tamped down on its own antisemitism) has won 32% of the popular vote and has emerged as the single largest party. Can the choice of a third of French voters be labelled as a lurch towards extremism just because they subscribe to a conservative worldview? Surely, this stigmatization of voter preference falls foul of the concept of “liberte” which is once again a core “democratic value”.
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