French left blasts Macron, demands keys to government

PARIS: French left-wingers attacked President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday after he called for a broad coalition government, demanding that their parliamentary bloc should propose a prime minister.

No single force won Sunday´s second-round vote outright, though a broad alliance of Socialists, Communists, Greens and the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) won the most seats, with 193 in the 577-strong National Assembly. The result left France rudderless at home, where it will host the Olympic Games in just over two weeks, and weakened abroad, where Macron was in Washington for a Nato summit.

In an open letter to voters, Macron said on Wednesday that “nobody won” the ballot.

He has left his centrist prime minister, Gabriel Attal, in place and called on parties to find common ground for a broad coalition.

Socialist Party chief Olivier Faure accused Macron of failing to “respect the vote of the French people”, while LFI figurehead Jean-Luc Melenchon blasted the “return of the royal veto”.

Sophie Binet, head of France´s biggest trade union federation, the CGT, also enlisted the image of the republic´s long-gone monarchy to attack the president.

“It´s like having Louis XVI locking himself away in Versailles,” she said, referring to the king guillotined in 1793 during the French Revolution.