Initial results from France’s parliamentary elections early on Monday have revealed that President Emmanuel Macron's La Republique En Marche! (LREM) political movement and its allies have won an overwhelming majority.
Based on 97 percent of votes counted, figures published by the Interior Ministry early Monday showed Macron's LREM and its ally, the centrist MoDem party, will return around 343 lawmakers to the National Assembly's 577-seat chamber -- far more than the 289 needed for an absolute majority.
This victory for the LREM -- a movement launched by Macron less than a year ago, and fielding a team of political novices -- is being viewed as a slap for mainstream French parties.
The center-right Les and their allies have trailed behind, with around 119 seats.
Les ' interim leader Francois Baroin said "the verdict of the ballots is clear" before wishing Macron success.
France’s Socialist Party and its allies won just 33 seats, a dramatic collapse from its previous haul of 277 seats.
Socialist leader Jean-Christophe Cambadelis admitted a “historic defeat” for his party and resigned from his post. Cambadelis said the “left should totally change...and submit fundamental reform…to counter neo-liberalism and nationalism".
Jean-Luc Melenchon’s far-left La France (Unbowed France) party and its Communist supporters will hold around 27 seats.
Melenchon tweeted he had been elected in Marseille. He said his party will be able to form a parliamentary group.
- Marine Le Pen elected
After four failed attempts to enter the National Assembly, recently defeated presidential candidate and National Front leader Marine Le Pen was finally elected as an MP in the far-right stronghold of Henin-Beaumont, northern France.
Her National Front party has secured eight seats, up from its current two but leading Front figure Florian Philippot lost in the 6th district of the Moselle department to Christophe Arend of Macron's LREM.
Le Pen, who had clashed with Macron in a fateful televised presidential debate, said party lawmakers would fight against what she called “the harmful projects of the government” and the president's pro-European, pro-migrant policies.
-Abstainers
However, Macron's victory looks to have been marred by a record-low voter turnout, calling into question his government’s legitimacy and his ability to implement reforms.
Official results put the abstention rate at 56.64 percent. According to the Interior Ministry, turnout at 5 p.m. local time (1500 GMT) in Paris was very low -- only 35.33 percent.
This is well down from 46.42 percent seen in the 2012 election and 40.75 percent in the first round of voting in these legislative elections on June 11.
-‘Opportunity for France’
Macron needed an absolute majority in the National Assembly, the lower and more powerful house of parliament, to get his reform bills passed and to govern with a free hand for the next five years.
In a televised speech, LREM president Catherine Barbaroux “the magnitude of this new majority is an opportunity for France".
Her comment was echoed by Prime Minister Edouard Philippe also hailed the make-up of the new National Assembly as an “opportunity for France”.
He said French voters had "in their vast majority preferred hope to anger, optimism to pessimism, confidence to withdrawal".
"A year ago, no one would have imagined political renewal like this. We owe it to the drive of the president of the republic to give new life to democracy.
“We owe it, too, to the French people, who wanted to give national representation a new face," Philippe added.
All six of the cabinet members running in the legislative election have succeeded in saving their government jobs.
Macron and his premier made it clear that in a case where a cabinet minister running for a seat failed to be elected, he or she would have to step down.
The Senate, France’s upper house, will be elected Sept. 24 by an electoral college.
