French far right declares power within reach as Mbappe issues dire warning

• Football hero Kylian Mbappe urges fans to vote for the right side, despite the RN’s first-round victory.
• Mbappe’s intervention will encourage the centrist camp led by President Emmanuel Macron and the broad-left coalition.
• Le Pen alleges that a right-center-left coalition could emerge after the election to prevent the RN from taking power.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen insisted on Thursday that her party can still win control of parliament despite efforts by the center and left to block her path. Football hero Kylian Mbappe urged fans to outvote “those people.”

Three days before Sunday’s run-off in France’s most critical legislative elections in recent history, a poll projected that Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) would fall short of an overall majority despite dominating the June 30 first-round vote.

As the clock ticks down to Sunday, tensions are growing, with assaults reported on candidates. The outcome will determine if postwar France elects its first far-right government since World War II or embarks on an era of potentially paralyzing coalition politics.

France’s iconic football captain and striker, Kylian Mbappe, addressed the race at a news conference in Hamburg ahead of the team’s Euro 2024 quarter-final against Portugal. He warned, “We can’t leave our country in the hands of those people there.”

“I think we all saw the results, it’s catastrophic,” he said of the RN’s first-round victory. “We hope that that will change and that everyone will mobilize to vote, and to vote for the right side.”

Mbappe’s intervention will encourage both the centrist camp, led by President Emmanuel Macron, and the broad-left wing coalition. Together, they have withdrawn more than 200 candidates from the runoff on Sunday in a joint effort to defeat the far right.

“I think there is still the capacity to have an absolute majority, with the electorate turning out in a final effort to get what they want,” the RN’s three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen told BFM television.

“I say turn out to vote as it’s a really important moment to get a change in politics in all the areas that are making you suffer right now,” she said.

If the RN wins an absolute majority of 289 seats in the 577-member National Assembly, it could form a government with Le Pen’s 28-year-old protege Jordan Bardella as prime minister. Le Pen acknowledged that Macron’s centrists and the New Popular Front (NFP) coalition had made her party’s task tougher with their “operation” to withdraw candidates and unite the anti-RN vote.

The move has sparked speculation that a right-center-left coalition could emerge after the election to prevent the RN from taking power. Le Pen alleges that the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) could be involved in such a coalition, an idea dismissed by Macron.

Le Pen, expected to make a fourth attempt to win the Elysee Palace in 2027, acknowledged that a handful of RN candidates had faced problems. One of them had to withdraw after a picture emerged showing her wearing a Nazi-era Luftwaffe cap.

“There are statements that have been inadmissible and will involve sanctions and there are also statements that are just clumsy,” Le Pen said.

Prosecutors detained four people, including three minors, after government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot and her team were attacked while sticking up campaign posters in Meudon outside Paris. Thevenot, of Mauritian origin, escaped unharmed, but a colleague and a supporter were wounded and hospitalized in the attack involving around 20 people.

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