France election: Macron, Le Pen and a political system under strain - CNA

WHO ARE THE CONTENDERS?

• RENAISSANCE AND ALLIES

Macron first pieced together his centrist party in 2016 in his initial run for president.

He poached politicians from the old center-left Socialist and center-right Gaullist parties to lead a technocratically minded government that said it would tackle entrenched interest groups, reinvigorate the economy and slash unemployment. It is still a work in progress.

• NATIONAL RALLY

The far-right, nationalist party was formerly known as the National Front. Its leader Marine Le Pen has tried to make the brand less toxic and more electable since taking over in 2011 from her father Jean-Marie, who was notorious for his racist and antisemitic comments.

Marine Le Pen has largely maintained the party’s hostility to immigrants but stopped campaigning for France to leave the European Union.

She’s brought more discipline to the movement, both in its language and attire in an effort to make it look and sound more like a government in waiting.

Opinion polls suggest the National Rally will win the biggest share of the vote in its best showing ever.

• NEW POPULAR FRONT

This coalition of leftist parties has called for a cut in the official retirement age to 60 from 62, reversing the law pushed through by Macron that will raise it to 64, a higher minimum wage and the return of wealth taxes.

Whether it would actually do all this in office would depend partly on which of its heavyweights became prime minister.

The movement is a coalition ranging from the far-left - personified by radical firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon - to more traditional social-democrats including former President Francois Hollande.

• THE REPUBLICANS

Inheritors of the center-right tradition established by de Gaulle and perpetuated by former Presidents Jacques Chirac and Georges Pompidou, the Republicans are now in turmoil.

When their leader Eric Ciotti defied his party colleagues and called for a tie-up with the National Rally, they fired him, only for Ciotti to insist he was staying on.

The party was trailing well behind its three main rivals in opinion polls, but could still play a decisive role if none can secure a majority in the assembly.

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2024-07-01 04:08:00Z
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Joe Biden's disastrous debate blamed on bad preparation, exhaustion - CNA

President Joe Biden's train-wreck debate with Republican opponent Donald Trump followed a series of decisions by his most senior advisers that critics now point to as wrong-headed, interviews with Democratic allies, donors and former and current aides show.

Trump, 78, repeated a series of well-worn, glaring falsehoods during the 90-minute debate on Thursday (Jun 27), including claims that he actually won the 2020 election.

Biden, 81, failed to refute them and his fumbling, halting performance has sparked calls from Democrats for him to end his quest for a second term and for "soul-searching" or resignations among top aides.

"My only request was make sure he's rested before the debate, but he was exhausted. He was unwell," said one person who said they appealed to Biden's top aides in the days before, to no avail. "What a bad decision to send him out looking sick and exhausted."

Others were even more pointed.

"It is my belief that he was over-coached, over-practiced. And I believe (senior aide) Anita Dunn ... put him in a venue that was conducive for Trump and not for him,” said John Morgan, a Florida-based attorney and major Biden fundraiser.

Morgan said Dunn and her husband, Bob Bauer, the president’s attorney who played Trump in pre-debate rehearsals, should "be fired forever and never let back anywhere near the campaign".

Biden's debate strategy was signed off on by campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon, who helped him win in 2020 and was appointed in January to boost an uneven reelection campaign. Dunn, a longtime Biden aide and former Barack Obama campaign strategist, backed that strategy.

Confidence going into the event was high. Trump was convicted of falsifying documents by a jury in New York on May 31, while Biden held back-to-back visits in Europe.

To the surprise of some Biden aides, his stubbornly low poll numbers began to inch up nationally in the weeks that followed.

Advisers set up a rigorous debate prep calendar, with Biden sequestered at Camp David for six days.

An inner circle, some close to Biden for decades, were involved: Ron Klain, his first White House chief of staff, Dunn, former White House counsel and Dunn's husband Bob Bauer and long-time adviser Mike Donilon, as well as about a dozen other policy and political experts.

Biden's campaign said on Friday that no staff shake-up was under consideration. Multiple aides, not just Dunn and Bauer, were involved in the preparation, said a campaign official, who also noted that Morgan was not there.

In an email to supporters on Saturday, O'Malley Dillon said internal polls and focus groups showed no change in voters' opinions in battleground states after the debate. She warned "overblown media narratives" may drive "temporary dips in the polls," but said she was confident Biden would win in November.

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2024-06-30 23:26:00Z
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Far-right wins first round in France election, run-off horsetrading begins - CNA

At Le Pen's Henin-Beaumont constituency in northern France, supporters waved French flags and sang the Marseillaise.

"The French have shown their willingness to turn the page on a contemptuous and corrosive power," Le Pen told the cheering crowd.

The RN's chances of winning power next week will depend on the political dealmaking made by its rivals over the coming days. In the past, centre-right and centre-left parties have teamed up to keep the RN from power, but that dynamic, known as the "republican front", is less certain than ever.

If no candidate reaches 50 per cent in the first round, the top two contenders automatically qualify for the second round, as well as all those with 12.5 per cent of registered voters. In the run-off, whoever wins the most votes takes the constituency.

The high turnout on Sunday suggests France is heading for a record number of three-way run-offs. These generally benefit the RN much more than two-way contests, experts say.

The horsetrading began almost immediately on Sunday night.

Macron called on voters to rally behind candidates who are "clearly republican and democratic", which, based on his recent declarations, would exclude candidates from the RN and the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party.

Political leaders from the centre-left and far-left all called on their third-placed candidates to drop out.

"Our guideline is simple and clear: Not a single more vote for the National Rally," France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said.

However, the centre-right Republican party, which split ahead of the vote with a small number of its lawmakers joining the RN, gave no guidance.

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2024-06-30 19:41:00Z
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France votes in crucial polls as far right eyes power - CNA

"FIGHT AGAINST HATRED"

As of noon, turnout in mainland France stood at 25.90 per cent, an increase from the 18.43 per cent recorded in legislative elections in 2022.

The shape of the new parliament will become clear after the second round on Jul 7.

Voters in France's overseas territories had cast ballots earlier in the weekend.

Electors lined up to cast ballots in France's Pacific territory of New Caledonia, where tensions remain high following deadly riots there last month.

"It should be well attended, but I don't know if everyone will play along and come out to vote," said nurse Cassandre Cazaux.

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy, Greens party leader Marine Tondelier and former prime minister and Macron ally Edouard Philippe were among the first high-profile politicians to vote.

Philippe, the mayor of Le Havre in northern France who has made little effort to hide his ambitions for the presidency, was seen smiling and chatting to locals.

Macron's decision to call the snap vote plunged the country into political turmoil and sparked uncertainty in Europe's second-biggest economy.

The Paris stock exchange suffered its biggest monthly decline in two years in June, dropping by 6.4 per cent, according to figures released on Friday.

In an editorial, French daily Le Monde said it was time to mobilise against the far right.

"Yielding any power to it means nothing less than taking the risk of seeing everything that has been built and conquered over more than two and a half centuries gradually being undone," it said.

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2024-06-30 13:38:00Z
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Supercar driver dies after car crashes, bursts into flames on Karak Highway - The Star

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2024-06-30 09:00:01Z
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North Korea condemns drills by US, Japan, South Korea as 'Asian NATO' - CNA

"We strongly denounce ... provocative military muscle-flexing against the DPRK," Pyongyang's foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run KCNA news agency Sunday, referring to the North's official name.

"The US-Japan-ROK relations have taken on the full-fledged appearance of an Asian-version NATO," it said, warning of "fatal consequences".

"The DPRK will never overlook the moves of the US and its followers to strengthen the military bloc."

The latest joint drills involved Washington's nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, Tokyo's guided-missile destroyer JS Atago, and Seoul's KF-16 fighter jet.

Pyongyang has always decried similar combined exercises as rehearsals for an invasion.

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2024-06-30 06:16:00Z
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What if Joe Biden leaves the US presidential race? - CNA

On Mar 31, 1968 President Lyndon Johnson made the shock announcement in the middle of the Vietnam War that he would not seek reelection.

The move turned that year's convention, also in Chicago, into a political crisis with protesters in the street and left-leaning delegates angry at the pro-war stance of party-picked candidate Hubert Humphrey.

Following the debacle, states more widely embraced the primary process and conventions have become well-oiled affairs, whose outcomes have been known in advance since they are determined by the primaries.

If a candidate must step down after being officially nominated at the convention, a party's formal governing body, either the Democratic National Committee or Republican National Committee, would nominate a new candidate in an extraordinary session.

WHO MIGHT FILL IN?

Vice President Harris would almost certainly be at the top of the list, but she has had her problems after a rocky start in the job and poor polling numbers. The US Constitution dictates that the vice president becomes president if the president dies or becomes incapacitated, but it does not weigh in on an inter-party process for choosing a nominee.

In addition to the vice president, others who had endorsed Biden in 2024 while harbouring their presidential aspirations for future cycles include California Governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

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2024-06-29 18:23:55Z
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