France to consecrate Macron and bury socialism

Although the political class and the media are stirring up the electoral race for the French presidency, the die has been cast. The opinion polls are also trying to add some excitement to the contest, but the reality is that the only options open to French voters are quite simple: either they reelect the moderate centrism of current president Emmanuel Macron or they risk the power of the Elysée falling into the hands of the extreme right of Marine Le Pen.

Both will be the final winners in next Sunday's elections, which will be left for the second round on 24 April, once the other candidates have been defeated in the first round, which will nonetheless have important consequences for the future of French politics, and, in turn, for the general shaping of the map of forces in the European Union.

Macron's victory is a foregone conclusion, even though, despite enjoying an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly, he has not been able to complete the major institutional reforms that are holding back the country's immense potential. The president continues to maintain France as the EU's undisputed interlocutor vis-à-vis third parties, such as Russia, China and the United States itself. It is true that he has had to deal with the failure of his operations to ensure stability in the French-speaking countries of the Sahel, but this challenge can no longer be taken up by a single former colonial power, so it will be up to the EU itself to take up the challenge, obviously with the support and resources that Paris can provide.

Macron's commitment to a stronger European Union multiplies its value in view of actions and aggressions such as those perpetrated by Russian President Vladimir Putin against Ukraine, the EU and the Western world, so that his re-election should boost the EU's autonomy or strategic industrial, military and financial sovereignty, vital projects for the existential survival of the EU-27 conglomerate.

Thanks to their two-round majority electoral system, the French are accustomed to expressing their anger and visceral hatred in the first round and casting a calm, rational and well-considered vote in the second. This explains, for example, why both Le Pen and her competitor for the far-right, Éric Zemmour, can together obtain around 28% of the vote in the first round, the same as Macron himself. Or that the loquacious Jean-Luc Mélenchon, representative of extreme left-wing populism, will receive 14% of the vote in the polls.

However, on the first election day on Sunday, 10 April, apart from confirming the two finalist candidates, the most relevant fact will be the demise of the historic Socialist Party (PSF). It will be the end of an agony that in reality has been going on for the whole of the 21st century. It seemed to revive when François Hollande won the presidency in 2012, a mirage from which he himself woke up when his Minister of Economy and Finance, Emmanuel Macron, left him in the lurch to set up his own party, La République en Marche (LRM), aware that the PSF was already giving off an unmistakable smell of cadaverine.

The French-Spanish mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, will be the protagonist of this final collapse, as the most favourable polls give her only 2.5% of the vote, far behind the ecologist Yannick Jadot (7%) and even the guardian of the Communist Party's essence, Fabien Roussel, who could get 3.5%. If these forecasts are fulfilled, it will be practically impossible for Hidalgo herself to complete her mandate in the Parisian city council until 2026.

Although on a lesser note, because in reality Macron has also taken his place, it will also be necessary to certify the non-revival of the traditional conservative formation, that of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, now embodied in the Republicans and whose promising candidate, Valérie Pécresse, president of the wealthy Paris-Isle de France region, will barely exceed 10% of the vote in the first round.

As a general consideration, in addition to the final shipwreck of the historic PSF, which produced such historic figures as Jean Jaurès, Leon Blum and François Mitterrand, we must also note that of the left itself, atomised into a plethora of candidates, who paradoxically called for unity when they themselves were running in a flurry, accentuating the division. A pitiful spectacle, which certainly does not help the public to regain confidence in a political class that, in general, continues to shoot up its discrediting indices.