Macron gambles rest of his presidency by calling French legislative elections
France’s finance minister said on Monday that the snap election called by President Emmanuel Macron after a bruising loss to the far right in European Parliament elections would be the most consequential legislative vote in the republic’s history.
Macron’s shock decision amounts to a roll of the dice on his political future. It could hand a great deal of power to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) after years on the sidelines, and neuter his presidency three years before it is due to end.
The legislative vote will take place on June 30, less than a month before the start of the Paris Olympics, with a second round on July 7.
Bruno Le Maire says Emmanuel Macron’s governing coalition must be clear with voters ahead of June 30 to avoid the far right taking over the domestic agenda.
“This will be the most consequential parliamentary election for France and for the French in the history of the Fifth Republic,” Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told RTL radio.
Helmed by 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, the RN won about 32 per cent of the vote on Sunday, more than double the Macron ticket’s 15 per cent, according to exit polls. The Socialists came within a whisker of Macron at 14 per cent.
“In the next few days, I’ll be saying what I think is the right direction for the nation. I’ve heard your message, your concerns, and I won’t leave them unanswered,” said Macron.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, a Socialist, said “a dissolution just before the Games, it’s really something that is extremely unsettling,” in comments reported by France 24. The Paris Olympics begin on July 26.
French President Emmanuel Macron has called a snap election after a surge in support for far-right parties in France and other European Union member states during European Parliament elections. Political rival Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party won twice as many votes as Macron’s centrist Renaissance party.
Element of surprise
Analysts said Macron’s decision aimed to make the best of his weak position, reclaiming the initiative and forcing RN into election mode faster than it would have liked.
Some RN leaders appeared to have been caught off guard.
“We didn’t think it would be immediately after the European elections, even if we wanted it to be,” RN deputy chairman Sebastien Chenu said on RTL Radio.
Bardella will be the party’s candidate for prime minister, Chenu said.
The result is hard to predict. The outcome is likely to depend on how committed leftist and centre-right voters are to the idea of blocking the far right from power. Voter turnout on Sunday was about 52 per cent, the interior ministry said.
If the RN wins a majority, Macron would still remain as president and direct defence and foreign policy. But he would lose the power to set the domestic agenda, from economic policy to security.
Among policies put forward by the party, the RN has proposed higher public spending, despite already significant levels of French debt, threatening to further raise funding costs at banks.
It also wants to expel more migrants, stop family reunification, restrict child-care benefits to French citizens, give French nationals preference in access to social housing and jobs, and withdraw residency for migrants that are out of work for more than a year.
Macron’s Renaissance party currently has 169 lower house lawmakers out of a total of 577. The RN has 88.
Anne Muxel, from the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po, says French president Emmanuel Macron is opening the door to volatility and uncertainty by calling a snap election that could lead to a far-right political party coming into power in the French government for the first time.
Eurasia Group said the RN was no shoo-in for a majority, predicting a hung parliament as the most likely scenario.
“Faced with another hung parliament, [Macron] will try to form a wider alliance with the centre-right or centre-left, possibly by appointing a prime minister from one of those camps,” it said in a note.
“We foresee a losing struggle for serious domestic reform or strict deficit reduction in the remaining three years of Macron’s term.”
The euro fell 0.5 per cent in early European trade, while Paris blue-chip stocks dropped two per cent, led by steep losses in banks BNP Paribas and Societe Generale.
Published at Sun, 09 Jun 2024 19:50:23 +0000
Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who has spent most of his life in prison since his conviction in the 1975 killings of two FBI agents in South Dakota, has a parole hearing Monday at a federal prison in Florida.
At 79, Peltier’s health is failing, and if this parole request is denied, it might be a decade or more before it is considered again, said his attorney Kevin Sharp, a former federal judge. Sharp and other supporters have long argued that Peltier was wrongly convicted.
“This whole entire hearing is a battle for his life,” said Nick Tilsen, president and CEO of the NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led advocacy group. “It’s time for him to come home.”
Peltier’s last parole hearing was in 2009. His fight for freedom has been championed by public figures and artists such as Robert Redford — who narrated Michael Apted’s 1992 documentary, Incident at Oglala� — Bishop Desmond Tutu, Rage Against the Machine, U2 and Robbie Robertson, who featured voice recordings made by Peltier in prison on his 1998 album, Contact from the Underworld of Redboy.
Here are some things to know about the case.
The American Indian Movement
An enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe, Peltier was active in the American Indian Movement (AIM), which began in the 1960s as a local organization in Minneapolis that grappled with issues of police brutality and discrimination against Native Americans. It quickly became a national force.
WATCH | The Fifth Estate’s 1987 report on the Peltier controversy:
AIM grabbed headlines in 1973 when it took over the village of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, leading to a 71-day standoff with federal agents. Tensions between AIM and the government remained high for years.
The FBI considered AIM an extremist organization, and planted spies within the group.
But Tilsen, a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation, says the AIM along with other groups were instrumental in securing rights Native Americans have today, including religious freedom, the ability to operate casinos and tribal colleges, and enter into contracts with the federal government to oversee schools and other services.
The deadly incident
Sharp blamed the government for creating what he described as a “powder keg” that exploded on June 26, 1975.
That’s the day agents came to Pine Ridge to serve arrest warrants amid ongoing battles over Indigenous treaty rights and self-determination.
AIM member Joseph Stuntz was killed by a law enforcement sniper in the shootout that ensued.
After being injured in the shootout, FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams were shot in the head at point-blank range.
Robert Robideau and Dino Butler of AIM were acquitted of killing Coler and Williams. After fleeing to Canada and being extradited to the United States, Peltier was convicted and sentenced in 1977 to life in prison, despite defence claims that evidence against him had been falsified.
“You’ve got a conviction that was riddled with misconduct by the prosecutors, the U.S. Attorney’s office, by the FBI who investigated this case and, frankly the jury,” Sharp said. “If they tried this today, he does not get convicted.”
Amnesty International agrees, maintaining Peltier’s trial was undermined by recanted witness statements and faulty ballistics evidence.
James Reynolds, a former senior U.S. attorney who once saw oversaw the government’s response to an appeal, wrote to Obama in 2017, saying it was time to grant Peltier clemency on humanitarian grounds.
Reynolds told CBC News at the time he “had no idea” if Peltier had fired any fatal shots, but that justice had been served by his decades-long sentence. He separately told the New York Daily News that the prosecution “might have saved a few corners here and there.”
No change in FBI position
FBI Director Chris Wray said in a statement that the agency was resolute in its opposition to Peltier’s latest application for parole.
“We must never forget or put aside that Peltier intentionally murdered these two young men and has never expressed remorse for his ruthless actions,” he wrote, adding that the case has been repeatedly upheld on appeal.
The FBI Agents Association, a professional group that represents mostly active agents, said in a letter any early release would be a “cruel act of betrayal.”
The Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI took aim at Peltier’s status as a cause célèbre.
“It may be kind of cultish to take his side as some kind of a hero. But he’s certainly not that; he’s a cold-blooded murderer,” said Mike Clark, president of the group, wrote in a letter opposing parole.
Family members of the two FBI agents killed are expected to get their say Monday at Federal Correctional Complex Coleman in Florida.
What next?
A decision is required to come within 21 days. If Peltier’s bid is denied, there are still legal avenues his team could explore, though a clemency request that has reached President Joe Biden might be his best bet.
Republican congressman Tim Burchett of Tennesse, along with 32 Democrats including high-profile House members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Katie Porter, in October called for Biden to grant Peltier clemency on compassionate grounds. The group cited “prosecutorial misconduct” as well as statements by Reynolds and late appellate judge Gerald Heaney, who also argued for Peltier to be released.
Former House member Deb Haaland in 2020 pushed for Peltier’s sentence to be commuted. It’s unclear if Haaland — the first Indigenous cabinet member as secretary of the interior — has had any conversations with Biden on the matter.
Dozens of Congress members push for clemency:
Published at Mon, 10 Jun 2024 17:12:44 +0000
