Europe

Some 30,000 police to be deployed across France on Sunday following runoff of election

Election campaign has been marred by political tensions and growing violence

People walking past posters of New Popular Front candidates for the French parliamentary elections in Malakoff near Paris
People walking past posters of New Popular Front candidates for the French parliamentary elections in Malakoff near Paris
Thu Jul 04 2024 - 18:19

Some 30,000 police will be deployed across France late on Sunday following the high-stakes runoff of a parliamentary election to ensure there is no trouble, a minister said, as three candidates said they had been victims of attacks on the campaign trail.

Sunday’s second round will determine whether Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) secures a parliamentary majority for the first time and forms the next government in France, the euro zone’s second largest economy.

The campaign has been marred by political tensions but also growing violence. Interior minister Gerald Darmanin said he would be “very careful” about security on Sunday evening, when the election’s results will be announced.

Some 5,000 of the 30,000 police deployed that evening will be located in Paris and its surroundings, and they will “ensure that the radical right and radical left do not take advantage of the situation to cause mayhem”, he told France 2 TV.

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Mr Darmanin said four people had been arrested over an attack that occurred on Wednesday evening on government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot and her team when they were out putting up campaign posters. While Ms Thevenot herself was not harmed, her deputy and a party activist were injured by an unidentified group of about 10 youths who were defacing campaign posters, Ms Thevenot told Le Parisien newspaper.

An RN candidate in Savoie, Marie Dauchy, also said she had been attacked by a shopkeeper at a market on Wednesday.

Separately, the 77-year-old deputy mayor of a small town near Grenoble in southeastern France was punched in the face on Thursday morning when putting up a poster for Olivier Veran, a former spokesman for president Emmanuel Macron.

Mr Veran denounced a “completely unprecedented context of violence in this campaign”.

RN is expected to fall short of an absolute majority, an opinion poll showed on Thursday. It was the second survey in as many days to show Ms Le Pen’s RN winning more seats than any other party but also missing the 289 threshold required for an absolute majority.

This suggested that a “republican front,” by which more than 200 candidates across the political spectrum pulled out of three-way second rounds to clear the path for whoever was best placed to defeat the RN runner in their district, seemed to be working.

The IFOP poll for LCI and Le Figaro showed the RN winning 210 to 240 seats, down from 240-270 before the withdrawals.

The leftist New Popular Front was seen in second place, with 170 to 200 seats, ahead of president Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Together group with 95 to 125 seats. The conservative Republicans were forecast to win 25 to 45 seats. – Reuters