Macron, Le Pen or abstain: In Paris suburbs, voters face devil’s choice as French election looms

AFP via Getty Images

For Aliti Faya, it’s as if time has stood still for two decades.

It was 2002 when he and other young left-leaning French voters in the Parisian suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis were faced with a tough choice: save the republic by choosing conservative standard-bearer Jacques Chirac, or allow far-right extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen to become president of France.