PARIS (AP) — With nine days to go before the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said Wednesday that the deeply divided country was “in a quagmire” after chaotic legislative elections that produced a fragmented parliament.
France has been on the brink of government paralysis since National Assembly elections earlier this month resulted in a split between three major political parties: the left-wing New Popular Front coalition, President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist allies and Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party.
The New Popular Front won the most seats, but it is far from having the majority needed to govern alone. The three main parties in the left-wing coalition, France Insoumise, the Socialists and the Greens, have urged the president to turn to them to form the new government. Yet they are in conflict over who to choose as prime minister.
Macron accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and other ministers on Tuesday, but asked Attal and other members of the government to manage day-to-day affairs until a new government is appointed. There is no specific timetable for Macron to appoint a new prime minister, and it is not yet clear when he will do so.
“We are in the middle of a quagmire,” Le Pen said on Wednesday, on the eve of the new parliament’s convening.
Le Pen, a three-time presidential candidate and a leading figure of France’s far right, has blamed Macron and the left for the post-election chaos.
She criticized Macron for not explaining when he planned to replace Attal.
“The French don’t know what’s going on,” Marine Le Pen said in an interview with BFM TV.
The opening session of the National Assembly, the powerful lower house of the French parliament, composed of 577 members, is scheduled for Thursday.
The left-wing alliance was hastily assembled to contest the recent national legislative elections, called by Macron after his centrist allies suffered a crushing defeat by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in the European Parliament elections in June. It was a gamble Macron made to prevent the far right from taking power.
The leaders of four parties in the left-wing alliance are calling on centrist and other left-wing MPs to form “a republican barrier” in the National Assembly that would prevent Marine Le Pen’s National Rally from obtaining leadership positions in Parliament.
Voters, they argued in a statement Wednesday, gave them “an extremely clear mandate to stand firmly against the far right and its rise.”
Le Pen accuses the left and Macron of anti-democratic behaviour by refusing elected deputies from his party important positions in Parliament.
The left-wing alliance is doing “enormous harm to democracy,” she said.
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