With just three day remaining until the second round of France’s legislative elections, the campaign has been marred by reported assaults and verbal abuse of candidates, prompting at least one of them to drop out of the crucial race. Read our liveblog to see how the day's events unfolded.
Summary:
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French football captain Kylian Mbappé on Thursday said it was “really urgent” for the French to vote in Sunday’s elections considering the “catastrophic” results that saw the far right reap unprecedented gains in the first round.
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Several parliamentary candidates including French government spokesperson Prisca Thevenot said they were attacked while on campaigning for the second round of legislative elections.
French far-right National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen on Thursday said her National Rally (RN) party was still capable of winning an absolute majority in the second round of legislative elections this weekend. The centrist forces of President Emmanuel Macron and a broad-left wing coalition have withdrawn more than 200 candidates from the runoff on Sunday in a joint effort to ensure the far right is defeated. - Government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot and her team said they had been "attacked" on Wednesday evening as they were putting up election posters in her constituency. According to a source close to the case, Thevenot, who is standing for re-election, was unharmed, but her assistant was wounded in the arm.
- Prime Minister Gabriel Attal denounced the attack on Thevenot, saying that “violence and intimidation have no place in our democracy". The Nanterre public prosecutor's office said it had opened an investigation into "violence committed against a public official in a meeting". Four people, including three minors, were taken into custody.
Yesterday's key developments:
- President Emmanuel Macron has ruled out a coalition government with the hard-left France Unbowed party, French media reported Wednesday, saying the leader told a cabinet meeting that “it’s out of question that France Unbowed joins the government”.
- Some 218 candidates who had qualified to compete in the second round of the French legislative elections have stepped aside to favour the candidate most likely to win against a National Rally opponent. Of those, 130 were on the left and 82 came from the Macron-led centrist alliance Ensemble, according to a count by French newspaper Le Monde.
- These withdrawals aim to block a landslide victory for Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally in Sunday's second round of legislative elections, as she said her party would lead the government only if it wins an absolute majority.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
