French-Montrealists vote in ‘historic’ election amid far-right surge

MONTREAL — A large number of French citizens in Montreal are expected to turn out for the first round of France’s parliamentary elections on Saturday, spurred to the polls by the threat of a rising far-right party and its allies, who are leading in the polls. The home.

Quebec is home to 260,000 French citizens, of which 200,000 live in Montreal. They form the largest population of French citizens outside mainland France and more than a quarter of registered voters in North America, according to the French government.

The French electoral system allows its citizens living abroad in 11 different districts to each elect one deputy to the 577-seat National Assembly. The French citizens of Montreal belong to the same district as the French living in the United States, Turks and Caicos, Cayman Islands and Bermuda. On Saturday, they will choose from nine candidates, from French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance Party to the National Rally, an anti-immigrant party poised to win the most seats.

Marie Lapierre, France’s consul general in Montreal, says she believes turnout in the city in this election will be double that of 2022.

“In the last parliamentary elections in 2022, we had a (turnout) of approximately 25% of voters. This time we have prepared for more… we are ready to welcome about 50 per cent (attendance),” she said.

“There is a great mobilization from the French community, which was really prepared to help us organize the vote,” said Lapierre.

Yan Niesing, president of the Union Française de Montréal, an organization that helps French citizens settle in the city, called the election “historic.”

“Everybody wants to have their say,” he said.

Frédéric Mérand, a professor of political science at the Montreal Center for International Studies at the Université de Montréal, says the level of engagement in the city is unusual for a French election.

“You see signs, posters and people handing out leaflets on the streets of Montreal for an election that’s happening in France, so it’s significant in that sense,” he said.

The election is an exceptional moment in French political history. Macron called the snap election earlier this month after his party suffered a crushing defeat by the far-right in the European Parliament vote. The first round on Saturday could see the country’s first far-right government since the Second World War Nazi occupation – or no majority at all.

The outcome of the vote, after a runoff on July 7 and an exceptionally short campaign, remains highly uncertain as three major political blocs compete: the far-right National Rally, Macron’s centrist alliance and the New Front coalition Popular which includes left, green and strong left.

Mérand says the main competitors for Montreal voters are the center and left parties.

“All the other candidates are expected to be far, far, far behind,” he said.

In 2022, a left-wing alliance won heavily among French voters in Montreal, with Macron’s party coming in second with 25% of the city’s French residents, and the National Rally coming out with 2%. However, with the votes of people in the United States and elsewhere in the district, Macron’s candidate took the seat.

Chedly Belkhodja, a professor at Concordia University’s School of Public and Community Affairs, attributes the rise in voter interest to a historic contest in France’s polarized society.

“This election will perhaps show a side of France that has not been seen for many, many years, which is the rise of the extreme right,” he said, adding that parties that were on the political fringes had become more normalized. and mainstream in recent years.

One of the candidates French-Montrealists can choose from is Washington DC-based Olivier Piton, who is part of Les Républicains, the center-right party to which former president Nicolas Sarkozy belonged. Piton says he is the best candidate to represent his North American voters, whose concerns differ from those of French citizens on the continent.

“Now we have to focus on what is really important to us … how we can defend our rights as French citizens, as residents in Canada or in the US,” he said.

Elias Forneris, candidate for Une Nouvelle Energie pour la France, also lives in the American capital and has spent much of his life in the United States and Great Britain. With little time to prepare after Macron’s announcement to dissolve parliament, he has focused most of his campaign online.

“I think there is something that unites the French living in Canada and the United States. We are often forgotten by the state in France, even though we are citizens on the same level as them, so what I would like to do is to be able to represent the voices of the French people here,” he said. .

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on June 29, 2024.

— With files from the Associated Press.

Joe Bongiorno, Canadian Press