প্রকাশ: 25/04/2022
French President
Emmanuel Macron won re-election on Sunday, convincingly defeating his rival
Marine Le Pen and prompting a wave of relief in Europe that the far-right had
been kept out of power.
Centrist Macron was set to win around 58 percent of the vote
in the second-round run-off compared with Le Pen on 42 percent, according to
projections by polling firms for French television channels based on a sample
of the vote count.
Macron is the first French president to win a second term
for two decades, but Le Pen's result also marks the closest the far-right has
ever come to taking power in France and has revealed a deeply divided nation.
The 44-year-old president faces a litany of challenges in
his second term, starting with parliamentary elections in June, where keeping a
majority will be critical to ensuring he can realise his ambitions to reform
France.
The outcome was expected to be confirmed by official results
overnight with the final figures due on Monday.
New era
In a victory speech on the Champ de Mars in central Paris at
the foot of the Eiffel Tower, Macron vowed to respond to the anger of voters
who backed his far-right rival, saying his new term would not continue
unchanged from the last five years.
"An answer must be found to the anger and disagreements
that led many of our compatriots to vote for the extreme right. It will be my
responsibility and that of those around me," he told thousands of cheering
supporters.
He also pledged a "renewed method" to govern France,
adding that this "new era" would not be one of "continuity with
the last term which is now ending".
In a combative speech to supporters in Paris in which she
accepted the result but showed no sign of quitting politics, Le Pen, 53, said
she would "never abandon" the French and was already preparing for
the June legislative elections.
"The result represents a brilliant victory," she
said to cheers.
"This evening, we launch the great battle for the
legislative elections," Le Pen said, adding that she felt "hope"
and calling on opponents of the president to join with her National Rally (RN)
party.
'Count on France'
The result is narrower than the second-round clash in 2017,
when the same two candidates met in the run-off and Macron polled over 66
percent of the vote.
For Le Pen, her third defeat in presidential polls will be a
bitter pill to swallow after she ploughed years of effort into making herself
electable and distancing her party from the legacy of its founder, her father
Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Critics insisted her party never stopped being extreme-right
and racist while Macron repeatedly pointed to her plan to ban the wearing of
the Muslim headscarf in public if elected.
The projections caused immense relief in Europe after fears
a Le Pen presidency would leave the continent rudderless following Brexit and
the departure from politics of German chancellor Angela Merkel.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi called Macron's victory
"great news for all of Europe" while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
said French voters "sent a strong vote of confidence in Europe
today."
EU president Charles Michel said the bloc can now
"count on France for five more years" while commission chief Ursula
von der Leyen rapidly congratulated him, saying she was "delighted to be able
to continue our excellent cooperation".
'Ocean of abstention'
Macron will be hoping for a less complicated second term
that will allow him to implement his vision of more pro-business reform and
tighter EU integration, after a first term shadowed by protests, then the
pandemic and finally Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
But he will have to win over those who backed his opponents
and the millions of French who did not bother to vote.
On the basis of the official figures, polling organisations
estimated that the abstention rate was on course for 28 percent, which would be
the highest in any presidential election second-round run-off since 1969.
High on his to-do-list is pension reform, including a
raising of the French retirement age which Macron has argued is essential for
the budget but is likely to run into strong opposition and protests.
Melenchon welcomed Le Pen's defeat as "very good news
for the unity of our people".
Nevertheless, "Mrs Le Pen and Mr Macron have barely a
third of the registered voters," he said. Macron "is submerged in an
ocean of abstention and spoilt ballots".
প্রধান সম্পাদকঃ সৈয়দ বোরহান কবীর
ক্রিয়েটিভ মিডিয়া লিমিটেডের অঙ্গ প্রতিষ্ঠান
বার্তা এবং বাণিজ্যিক কার্যালয়ঃ ২/৩ , ব্লক - ডি , লালমাটিয়া , ঢাকা -১২০৭
নিবন্ধিত ঠিকানাঃ বাড়ি# ৪৩ (লেভেল-৫) , রোড#১৬ নতুন (পুরাতন ২৭) , ধানমন্ডি , ঢাকা- ১২০৯
ফোনঃ +৮৮-০২৯১২৩৬৭৭