THE FRENCH ELECTION AND WHAT IT MEANS TO DEMOCRACY

Emmanuel Macron, a win for Western democracy

Vive la démocratie française! Liberal democrats throughout Europe and around the world breathed a collective sigh of relief this past weekend after French voters overwhelmingly chose against the far-right, anti-European Union project of extreme right-wing nationalist Marine Le Pen. But while initial numbers demonstrated her opponent, Emmanuel Macron, to have won a decisive landslide victory, deeper analysis leaves room for grave concern about where the tides of French democracy will go from here and about the trends among French voters that may well reflect those emerging in the rest of Europe and, indeed, the West as well.

First of all, it’s important to note not only who voted for Macron and Le Pen, but also who didn’t. 

About nine percent of those who voted in Sunday’s presidential election cast either blank or spoiled ballots. For the most part, these were probably not erroneous votes, but purposely adulterated or uncompleted ones. The so-called ballot blanc is a long-traditional means of protest in France and the proportion of nine spoiled or blank ballots out of every 100 votes cast sets a record for any election since Charles de Gaulle first founded France’s Fifth Republic in 1958.

This clearly denotes voter dissatisfaction with both of the candidates who were in the running, and is underscored still further by the more than 25 percent of French voters who abstained from voting altogether. According to media reports, that was the highest voter abstention rate for any presidential election in nearly half a century. Traditionally, France has a high voter turnout, compared with, say, the United States (where only about half of the electorate turned out in the latest presidential vote, allowing Donald Trump to win the White House with the backing of barely more than a quarter of the entire electorate). But this time, 12 million potential French voters stayed away from the polling stations, about three million more than abstained in the last presidential race, when the turnout was equivalent to about 80 percent of the potential electorate.

In other words, one fourth of the French electorate simply couldn’t be bothered to vote for either of the candidates in the running. While that may be bad news for both candidates, Madame Le Pen was clearly the biggest loser in this, as well as a general sense, since analysts claim the majority of the abstentions were among a disillusioned French left, which, had they voted, would have made the vote against her even more overwhelming. That outcome means that Marine Le Pen wasn’t even second to Macron, but third (by a ten percent margin), after those who decided to abstain.

Le Pen and Macron - 16 million abstained from voting for either.

It was, however, also a warning to Macron, that the broad political front that he was seeking to form, in an attempt to be all things to all people, didn’t stretch far enough to draw in the undecided, especially on the left of the political spectrum, despite running against a patently recognizable (and dangerous) far-right candidate.

The stark reality for both candidates is that 16 million French voters refused, one way or another, to vote for either of them. That’s five million more voters than the total who abstained in the previous presidential election that François Hollande won in 2012. Many of those who abstained were followers of organized campaigns that presented both candidates as a choice between the lesser of two evils. One such campaign, Boycott 2017, posited that this sort of choice represented the demise of French democracy and that, as such, voters should refrain from casting their ballots for either candidate on democratic principle.

In point of fact, France boasts a robust electoral system and a strong republican tradition. The victories of Donald Trump and Brexit pale by comparison. But then again, it should be remembered that Trump isn’t a product of the established far right and for many of the undecided voters who favored him, he didn’t—despite his obvious political bent—represent far-right populist nationalism as much as he did a sharp turn (no matter what the direction) away from business as usual in Washington. That’s not the case of Le Pen, whose far right-wing nationalist credentials are well established and were handed down to her from her father, France’s most famous (or infamous) xenophobic popular nationalist.  Meanwhile, most of those who voted for Brexit were voting for just that—an exit from the European Union and the EU’s call to own up to the refugee crisis—not for the Nigel Farages or Boris Johnsons behind it. They were voting against immigration and globalism, not for a particular candidate. In Marine Le Pen’s case, the votes she got were from people who believe that her brand of isolationist popular nationalism would be a good change for France. Seen in this way, her taking one out of every three votes actually cast for a candidate is a telling message about the state of liberal democracy in France, and indeed in Europe. And this is a fact that Macron can’t afford to ignore as he moves forward in seeking to cure the divisions in his country and in Europe.

Marine Le Pen with firebrand rightist father Jean-Marie

When compared to the previous two presidents’ support, Macron’s win stacks up brilliantly. The 20.7 million votes cast place him well above the initial popularity of current President Hollande (who won with 18 million votes), and of former President Nicolas Sarkozy (who received 18.9 million). But that doesn’t belie the historic advances of the extreme right, since when Jacques Chirac ran against Marine Le Pen’s father in 2002, he dealt the far-right candidate a crushing defeat, claiming 25.5 million votes in that presidential election. Furthermore, while Macron took 66 percent of the votes cast for either candidate, compared with Le Pen’s 33 percent, if abstentions and blank votes are counted he actually only won 43.6 percent of the potential electorate’s votes—which is, nonetheless, a crushing victory over the 22 percent of the potential electorate that went to Le Pen.

In France, as in the last election in the US, a major driving political force is pent-up anger at what is seen as the lost political voice of the common citizen, which all too often plays, unfortunately, as a jingoistic resurgence of nationalism and isolationism, as well as of social divisiveness along racial and/or ethnic lines. These are the facile political tenets that the Donald Trumps and Marine Le Pens of the world play to, with no compunction whatsoever with regard to the potential unrest and violence that such pseudo-democratic populist policies breed.

This is where Macron cannot afford to fail. The fact that he responds to no political party in France is being seen by many observers as a weakness as he prepares to take the helm. But it could, in fact, prove to be an advantage, since he brings no inherited political rivalries to office with him and can thus work to gain broad support for his policies among all segments of French politics. What will most come into play is his ability to create ample relations and to soothe divisions for the good of the French Republic as a whole, and in this sense, his stature as an independent who pulled off a landslide victory should work entirely to his advantage in gaining broad support from all but the far-right and far-left of the political spectrum, whose advance he must seek to isolate and block.

At a time when the world has witnessed a frightening rise of far-right nationalism and a clear-cut authoritarian threat to democracy on the world political stage, Emmanuel Macron’s sweeping victory, as the youngest president in French history, is cause among true democrats for celebration and optimism. His triumph goes beyond the winning of an election. It represents a decisive victory over the current trend set by the kind of nationalist xenophobia purveyed through US President Donald Trump, Britain’s Nigel Farage, Brexit facilitator and British Prime Minister Theresa May and France’s own Marine Le Pen. It stands too for the unflinching defense of the European Union, and of the ideals that the EU represents as the main keeper of peace in once war-torn Europe—lest we forget, the main stage for both World Wars—for the past 70 years. In this sense, the fact that the “theme song” for Macron’s victory speech was the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (which doubles as the anthem for the European Union), and not France’s Anthem (La Marseillaise) should be taken as a sign of the new president’s commitment to reaffirm France’s stake in the future of Europe.

Moreover, Macron’s decisive win tends to guarantee that France will not, as the US has, play into the hands of the Putin regime in Russia. Marine Le Pen’s courting of Vladimir Putin and her disdain for the EU have been chillingly similar to the stances of Donald Trump, who has shamelessly praised and kowtowed to the Russian president and savaged the EU, ignoring the fact that the Russian strongman’s interests are diametrically opposed to those of both the US and the EU, and, more importantly, to Western-style democracy. To praise Putin’s leadership is to praise authoritarianism and any move toward ties that legitimize the Putin regime’s aggressions abroad and abuse of authority at home come in detriment to the democracies whose leaders foster them. So Macron’s win is, then, a relief in this connection as well.

In short, French voters and their majority-backed president-elect spell new hope for the future of democracy, peace and harmony, as long as Macron proves to be worthy of the daunting task that lies ahead of him in healing divisions and bolstering democratic fervor, not only in his country but also in Europe and the West at large.