After a fairly comprehensive win for Macron in the presidential elections it looks as if he will sweep the legislative elections.
This map shows the top party for each region, the top two go trhough to the final round. From a quick scan of the results it seems like MAcron's party tends to have a fairly large lead in most districts, A quick scan of 20-odd at random threw up winning margins of 7-20 points.
Assuming Macron's party is likely to pick up as many or more second choices then he is looking at a landslide. And a few people are suddenly pointing ou thaty amidst the self-congratulation of defeating the Front National they are now giving a blank cheque to a guy whose policies are not all clear but who is definitely planning a huge set of neo-liberal reforms. While the French system does have many problems caused by employment protections it is very unlikely those will disappear when he guts those protections. IT means that an elitist system will become more elitist, currently stable jobs will no longer be so and the basic dignity of workers will decrease as their employment and working conditions are destroyed.
I'm not as well versed in this as I could be, but it is interesting to see that Mélenchon (10.9%) has overtaken the Socialist party,(10%) which I think has won a mere handful of districts in the first round. The Front National was ahead of both of them (13.9%) and Les Républicains were in second place (21.2%). Macron's 32¨% puts him in a very powerful position, it will also be a bit of a shake-up as most of his choices were picked at auditions and will not necessarily have a lot of political experience.
http://www.lavoixdunord.fr/17
http://www.lavoixdunord.fr/176478/article/2017-06-11/aucun-candidat-socialiste-au-second-tour-dans-le-nord-et-le-pas-de-calais
no PS candidates in the second round in Nord-Pas-de-Calais where they did win 17 out of 33 constituencies in 2012
According to France 24,
According to France 24, Macron's "party" will capture 3/4 of the seats in the National Assembly... but with only 15% of those eligible to vote actually voting. Wow.
I think for the first round
I think for the first round is was 27% but might have been lower.
the most important results of
the most important results of the 2nd round:
turnout of 42,64% (55,40% in 2012)
empty ballots: 6,93% (3.85% empty and spoilt ones in 2012)
spoilt ballots: 2,94%
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/business/macron-france-labor-union-laurent-berger.html
Crazy stuff!
Crazy stuff!
A little bit of info on
A little bit of info on Macron, mostly translated from Alternative Libertaire
"The bourgeoisie's most enlightened strategists came up with Macron. Neither left, nor right, nor even centre, but modern."
They point out that MAcron is simply finishing of a sustained cross party attack on conditions that has been resisted and often stopped but not pushed back. They also point out that the 'weak growth' that justfies austerity has done nothing to harm bosses' profits.
"the promised new transparency has become the secret rule by decree"
Macron published four decrees rather than go through parliament, he is going for employment rights (small businesses can sack people much more easily now), using a state of emergency to increase repression, hitting education and cutting employer contributionsto zero for salaries less than 1.6 times the minimum wage. (Employer contributions are very high in France, my employer pays the same amount as my take home in contributions and my take home is 80% of my taxable revenue. One reason why foreigners are disappointed in the UK, they don't realise that the salaries given are gross and that nearly all costs come out of the employees' share)
He is gunning for pensions next, January 2018
Interesting stuff. Any chance
Interesting stuff. Any chance you could translate a bigger chunk for the news section?
Also I read that opinion polls now show a majority of French people disapprove of Macron and his party, which is pretty funny, as that didn't take long!
Quote: Also I read that
He's been losing support faster than Hollande, which is pretty bad.
Using decrees hasn't helped and a lot of people were caught up in the idea of change and giving the FN a kicking but then realised they'd given him a blank cheque.
I'll have a look at translating the article over the weekend.
Done
Amazing cheers!
Amazing cheers!
Strike article up. Took ages
Strike article up.
Took ages I'm tired and can't find any other good WITCH bloc pictures for front page of it.
If someone could put the piuctures into a gallery so they don't disappear later on that would be good.
If someone wants to pull these out for a gallery that would be good too.
https://twitter.com/SMouillard/status/907575388360114176/photo/1
And I forgot the actual strike bit. shit
Original article was titled
Original article was titled Let's bring Jupiter down to earth.
During an interview about his presidency Macron described his vision of himself as president as jupiterian. Contrasting himself with Hollande's 'normal' presidency, itself a reaction to Sarkozy's 'hyper-presidency'.
This is a deliberate choice of symbol, he talks at some length about symbols, he wants to be an undisputed leader who is followed. He stresses that he wants to be democratic, not autocratic, but his vision of democratic appears to be using his powers however he sees fit as his election gives him that right.
A survey published in Humanité today has quite a lot of info, notably while 56% of the respondents describe themself as on the right 66% percent disapprove wholly or partly of his employment law.