French election results have a lesson for India

The French election results have handed out a huge shocker to the entire world after almost all pollsters predicted a massive win for the Right-wing party, National Rally (NR). However, despite cornering the highest vote share at 37.4 per cent, the NR has failed to secure a minimum of 289 seats, required to form a government in France. Instead of a highly anticipated NR government, the country is now staring at a hung parliament with the only choice being a coalition of Centrists, led by President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance Party and the Leftists, represented by New Popular Front, coming together to run the country for the next five years.

The results are surprising given that it was the Right-wing resurgence in the European parliamentary polls that had pushed Macron to dissolve the National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament, much ahead of its time and call for snap elections. In the European parliamentary elections, the Right-wing parties had won a combined vote share of 40 per cent while Macron’s party had contracted to just a 14 per cent vote share. It was seen as an indication that the “far-right” was now the premier political force in France, leading Macron to take it too personally and announce early polls.

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But the results have come as a relief for Macron because not only has his party not performed as badly as it was expected, but also his rival, the NR, has been successfully barred from forming a government. But does it also mean that the Right forces are not as powerful as they were being made out to be? Well, clearly not and to show that let’s further dissect the election verdict.

The French elections are slightly different from the Indian system where whoever gets past the post first is declared a winner on that particular seat. But in France, a two-round system of voting exists where if a candidate fails to get at least 50 per cent votes, then a voting is re-held for the second time on those seats. In the first round of elections, the NR led by Marine Le Pen had secured the maximum number of votes, but with no clear winner having 289 seats in its kitty, run-offs were imminent. The run-offs, or the second round, was conducted on July 7 where the NR again emerged to be the biggest party with a 37 per cent vote share in comparison to just 26 per cent vote share of its nearest rivals, the New Popular Front, and 22 per cent vote share of Macron-led centrists. However, despite having a consistently large vote share in both the rounds, the NR failed to secure the required majority.

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Now, the global media, including its Indian counterpart, is eclectic, showcasing this as a loss for the Right. But there is no greater example of intellectual dishonesty than this. Actually, it is NR that enjoys the largest support from French people but what kept it out of power is a tactical alliance between the centrists and the leftists.

As soon as the word went out that NR had secured maximum vote share in the first round, both the Ensemble, Macron-led coalition of centrist parties and NFP, a newly formed alliance of leftist parties, on the eve of elections sprang into immediate action. The second round which was going to be a triangular contest between Right, Left and Centre was soon turned into a two-way contest between just Right and the well-planned alliance of Left and Centre. As many as 102 Left-wing candidates withdrew to shift votes to the centrists and as many as 83 centrists withdrew from the race to favour the leftists. From this point onwards, it was anyone’s guess what the election result would look like.

The NR was successfully stopped from claiming power for the next five years and in its place, a hung parliament was awarded to the voters. It wasn’t some usual democratic exercise where voters seemed to have any choice. The leaders on the centre and the Left side of the spectrum issued clear whips to keep the NR out. But does that mean the NR is a political force that can be safely written off? Well, absolutely not. If we look away from the narrative that’s being painted for us, the truth is that the NR has consistently outperformed expectations in the last one and a half decade. Since Marine Le Pen has taken over the reins of the party from her father, she has rounded the edges of the party to attract a wider political base.

Today, a large part of the electorate, especially the young, identify with the NR’s politics with its seat count growing from a mere 2 in 2012 to 142 in 2024. When the party speaks about the menace of immigration, it resonates with the French people who have become tired of regular riots by the ultra-Left and the Antifa type of gangs. A considerable section of the French populace wants to return to the good, old France where Left-style inclusivity wasn’t used to nurture immigrants especially Islamists as a vote-bank. Their demand for a ‘French First’ or ‘National Preference’ driven politics seems a legitimate one when immigrant appeasement seems to undercut their choices in their own homeland. Ironically, it is they who are labelled as ‘racists’ and Islamophobic’ while the newly arrived asylum seekers and refugees refuse to assimilate with the French.

Interestingly, the French election result has too many eerie similarities with the 2024 Indian elections as well. The joining of forces between centrists and leftists in France reminds one of the tactical alliance between Congress and myriad other parties who joined hands to defeat the BJP in the form of the INDI alliance. Despite having very different ideological backgrounds, they came together only to keep Prime Minister Narendra Modi out of power. In France, their target was Marine Le Pen. Then the smooth vote transfer between the centrists and the leftists in the French context reminds one of what happened in India as well. In Uttar Pradesh and even Assam, the Muslims didn’t vote based on some secular values but showed a clear preference for only that party which was best placed to defeat the BJP.

It was the tactical alliance of the INDI parties that led to a consolidation of reserved category votes (SC/STs) and minorities bringing them more than expected number of seats. A reverse polarisation of Hindu votes failed to happen because the ‘caste card’ was already unleashed as a weapon that was too powerful to fail. Even the higher voter turnout in the French elections in the second round reminds one of early phases of the 2024 Indian elections of how proactively ground support was shored up to keep the BJP out of power.

The only difference between the French and Indian elections is that the NR failed to make a government despite getting the highest number of votes, while BJP got saved by a whisker and successfully came to power again. But what does all this tell you about the nature of our democracies? It paints a worrying picture that despite speaking for some very legitimate concerns of the electorate over immigrants and other issues, the tactical alliance between the centre and the Left can put a spinner in the wheel of much-needed change.

In India, Congress itself has tilted so much to the Left that its manifesto today can put even the communist parties in the world to shame. What’s worse is that democracy, which is a system to ensure government of the people, for the people and by the people has become a tool in the hands of a few vested interests to assert their power. Their propensity to vote en bloc has the ability to keep an entire country hostage.