PARIS (Parliament Politics Magazine) – The presidential election is in 5 days. Prime Minister Jean Castex announces that he will present his resignation and that of the government if Emmanuel Macron wins, leaving to prepare a ministerial reshuffle.
ALSO READ: French Presidential Election: poll results; news from the 2nd round
THE ESSENTIALS
- Emmanuel Macron or Marine Le Pen? This Sunday, April 24, one of the two candidates will be elected President of the Republic.
- The results of the latest polls on the 2nd round of the 2022 presidential election all give Emmanuel Macron the winner in a range of 53 to 56% against 44 to 47% for Marine Le Pen. The outcome of the election remains uncertain.
- This Tuesday, the big debate between the two rounds is the big event of this week. Marine Le Pen hopes that this confrontation reverses the dynamic recorded so far.
- Edouard Philippe gave an interview to Figaro this Tuesday morning. He asks Emmanuel Macron to “start reforming quickly”, insisting on the subject of pensions, if he is re-elected. “Nothing is decided,” he added, speaking of the result of this election.
- Prime Minister Jean Castex announced on France Inter that in the event of Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the second round of the presidential election, he would present the resignation of the government in the following days, “as tradition dictates”.
Gaël Perdriau accuses the Republican right of “selling off all Republican values” in this campaign
“Will the Republican right finally turn its back on the identity drift started by Nicolas Sarkozy?” This is how the mayor LR of Saint-Etienne titles his column, published this morning in Le Monde. He comes back to the campaign of Valérie Pécresse, which, according to him, took a decisive turn on February 13, during the meeting at the Zenith in Paris: the candidate then takes up the expression “French paper”, which appeared in the anti-Semitic daily La Libre Parole, but also that of “great replacement”. “Was the race for the Elysee Palace worth selling off all republican values? On February 13, the Republican right, allied with the centrists, sank morally by agreeing to make the ideological breeding ground of the far right its own”.
The contours of the debate between the two rounds are becoming clearer
The Macron-Le Pen duel will take place on Wednesday April 20 on TF1 and France 2. Some information is filtering out on the scenography of this debate: the event will take place without an audience, the candidates will be placed behind two independent offices – unlike 2017 where they were on either side of a table. The exchange will be led by Gilles Bouleau and Léa Salamé, who will have to respect a duty of reserve, a “fallback position”, indicated Thierry Thuillier, director of information of TF1, to World.
Macron twelve points ahead of Le Pen in the latest poll
More than ten points separate the two candidates in the second round of the presidential election. The latest OpinionWay poll for CNews published this on Tuesday, April 19, 2022 credits Emmanuel Macron with 56% of voting intentions against 44% for Marine Le Pen. The trend is favourable to the outgoing president three days after his meeting organised in Marseille, but the gap between the two finalists remains less significant than in 2017 when the president-candidate had won more than 66% of the votes against the candidate of the far right.
Emmanuel Macron re-elected this Sunday? “Nothing seems played to me”, says Edouard Philippe
“Nothing seems to be settled to me because many unknowns weigh on the ballot, starting with abstention. This campaign between the two rounds is useful: it makes it possible to enrich the candidate’s program and to clearly show what is his opponent’s program”, stated Edouard Philippe in his interview with Figaro. For him, the results of this 2022 presidential election remain undecided, “many people will vote for the President of the Republic without enthusiasm, without sharing the program, but they will do it because they consider that France would be much worse with Marine Le Pen. To dismiss Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron back to back is irresponsible, just like sending the instruction “not a voice to Marine Le Pen”, which obviously leaves the door open to all abstentions.”
Jean Castex will resign if Emmanuel Macron is re-elected
If Emmanuel Macron wins the second round of the presidential election, “in the days that follow, as tradition dictates, I will present my resignation and that of the government to the President of the Republic”, declared the Prime Minister on France Inter this morning. Jean Castex did not fail to add that “what concerns me today is the second round of the elections”, implying that nothing was yet certain of Emmanuel Macron’s victory, even if the latter digs a little difference in the polls.
