Abstention wins in France

It has been a presidential election in which the fear of the far right has been fading as the socio-economic situation worsens and globalisation, immigration and the European Union (EU) are blamed for this. In France, the abstention rate has risen to 28.2%, the highest in the last fifty years, according to preliminary data. 

Emmanuel Macron, obstinate in continuing to show himself as a renewed centrist option, will continue to govern for another five years, but he will do so with the stalking of the nationalists (with their most rancid and rupturist vision) and their pretensions to tear down the pillars of globalisation in order to return to protectionism.  

The first results of this second-round election are eloquent and revealing of the mood of the population, which does not feel represented either by Macron or by his opponent at the polls: the ultra-conservative Marine Le Pen. 

There is a worrying indifference among the electorate. Almost 30% of the electorate has decided - dangerously - to stay at home, not to exercise their ultimate right of democratic choice because they have simply moved on from Macron and Le Pen. For this group that abstained, it made exactly the same difference whether a pro-European or a Eurosceptic governed the country for the next five years; it made no difference whether a pro-globalisation person governed the country or a conservative and localist one. That someone might even follow the same path as the United Kingdom with its Brexit. 

The silence of this mass is painful and Macron, who won with 58.8% of the votes (data counted at around ten o'clock at night in France), understands this. He expressed this in his speech after seeing himself as the winner; he promised that this re-election, for another five-year term, will not be the same as his previous government.  He reiterated that he is aware of the anger, rage and fury of those who did not vote for him, including many young people.

There is a disturbing indifference because more and more people do not feel represented, neither in the traditional parties nor by the new parties. Macron was voted for by voters who are still afraid of Le Pen, who see in her discourse an apology for hatred against those who are different. 

The candidate, for National Rally, knows that, despite having obtained 41.2% of the votes and being 17.6 points behind Macron, she has improved her results compared to the second round of 2017, also against Macron and in which she was 30 points behind. She knows that her discourse has resonated with more people and that she has benefited from the indifference of such a high abstention rate because, between a white government and a black government, people chose to stay at home. 
A Le Pen victory is the worst thing that could have happened to France and the EU at a time of cohesion in the bloc in the face of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, when sanctions are being discussed and imposed and the war occupation is being condemned.

Macron's triumph and re-election provides a respite for the EU, which will sleep soundly once the results are in, although no democracy can sit idly by in the face of the far-right's stalking.     

There are flaws in the current mechanisms of representation. Macron is a young candidate, 44 years old, whose vision should therefore be closer to the millennial generation that continues to feel hurt by the 2008 crisis; by the crisis triggered by the pandemic and now by the schism in commodity markets caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

The France of liberty, equality and fraternity is a social and political thermometer of what is happening in the European spectrum, with a multicultural nation, in which aspects such as wearing the hijab, which Macron defends as part of his nation's freedom protected by the secular and republican Constitution, but which Le Pen is targeting with a referendum to ban it, have come into play.

Le Pen, 53, is also young and as ambitious as she is to unite all the colours of the right and will continue to work hard to win over the forgotten France of the current public policies that orbits the countryside and the marginal suburbs. In her speech, after acknowledging Macron's victory, she said that the time of the traditional parties is over.

She has found - and increasingly so - a greater echo in the French overseas territories that feel very far from the policies of the Elysée, with an irritation that has given significant votes in Guadeloupe (Le Pen 69.6% and Macron 30.4%); Martinique and French Guiana (she won with 61%); in Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin (55.52%); in Saint Pierre and Miquelon (50.69%) and only in French Polynesia did Macron come out on top (51.81%).

It has been a long time since we had such a bad result in a French election, democracy is undergoing convulsions not only in France, but in many other countries and we are going through volatile, confused and rarefied times due to war, pandemics and the destruction of many values that add up and unify. 

Macron is re-elected, but he runs the risk of having a weak government: the key date for determining the direction of governance in the coming years will be the legislative elections of 12 June 2022, and the outlook could be extremely complicated if the République en Marche! does not get the people out of their homes. Macron has won because indifference decided to fall asleep this Sunday and because of the more or less moderate left of the France Insoumise party led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 42% of his co-religionists voted for him.