XPost: soc.retirement, alt.global-warming, talk.politics.misc   
   XPost: alt.politics   
   From: Skraeling666@yahoo.com   
      
   Centrist Emmanuel Macron wins French presidency   
   JOHN LEICESTER AND SYLVIE CORBET   
   PARIS — The Associated Press   
   Published Sunday, May 07, 2017 8:19AM EDT   
   Last updated Sunday, May 07, 2017 3:41PM EDT   
      
   French voters elected centrist Emmanuel Macron as the country’s   
   youngest president ever on Sunday, delivering a resounding   
   victory to the unabashedly pro-European former investment   
   banker and strengthening France’s place as a central pillar of   
   the European Union.   
      
   A crowd of Macron supporters roared with delight at the news,   
   jubilantly waving red, white and blue tricolour flags at a   
   victory party outside the Louvre Museum in Paris.   
      
   Marine Le Pen, his far-right opponent in the presidential   
   runoff, quickly called the 39-year-old Macron to concede defeat   
   after voters rejected her “French-first” nationalism by a large   
   margin.   
      
   Read more: Five things to expect from a Macron or Le Pen   
   victory in French election   
      
   The result wasn’t even close: Pollsters projected that Macron   
   won 65 per cent of the votes. Le Pen’s projected 35 per cent   
   score was lower than her polling numbers earlier in the   
   campaign, and dashed her hopes that the populist wave which   
   swept Donald Trump into the White House would also carry her to   
   France’s presidential Elysee Palace.   
      
   Macron’s victory marked the third time in six months —   
   following elections in Austria and the Netherlands — that   
   European voters shot down far-right populists who wanted to   
   restore borders across Europe. The election of a French   
   president who championed European unity could strengthen the   
   EU’s hand in its complex divorce proceedings with Britain,   
   which voted last year to leave the bloc.   
      
   In a statement minutes after the last polls closed Sunday   
   night, Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced Macron’s   
   victory.   
      
   “(This) testifies to the lucidity of the voters, who rejected   
   the deadly project of the extreme right,” he said, adding that   
   the presidential vote showed an embrace of the EU.   
      
   Many French voters backed Macron reluctantly, not because they   
   agreed with his politics but simply to keep out Le Pen and her   
   far-right National Front party, which is still tainted by its   
   long anti-Semitic and racist history.   
      
   After the most closely watched and unpredictable French   
   presidential campaign in recent memory, many voters rejected   
   the runoff choice altogether. Pollsters projected that French   
   voters cast blank or spoiled ballots in record numbers Sunday.   
      
   Macron now becomes not only France’s youngest-ever president   
   but also one of its most unlikely. Until now, modern France had   
   been governed either by the Socialists or the conservatives —   
   but both Macron and Le Pen upended those political traditions.   
      
   Unknown to voters before his turbulent 2014-16 tenure as   
   France’s pro-business economy minister, Macron took a giant   
   gamble by quitting the government of outgoing Socialist   
   President Francois Hollande to run as an independent in his   
   first electoral campaign.   
      
   His startup political movement — optimistically named, “En   
   Marche!,” or “Forward!” — caught fire in just one year,   
   harnessing voters’ hunger for new faces and new ideas and   
   steering France into unchartered political territory.   
      
   In a first for postwar France, neither of the mainstream   
   parties on the left or the right qualified in the first round   
   of voting on April 23 for Sunday’s winner-takes-all duel   
   between Macron and Le Pen.   
      
   Despite her loss, Le Pen’s advancement to the runoff for the   
   first time marked a breakthrough for the 48-year-old. She had   
   placed third in the 2012 presidential vote, underscoring a   
   growing acceptance for her fierce anti-immigration, France-   
   first nationalism among disgruntled voters.   
      
   Le Pen immediately turned her focus to France’s upcoming   
   legislative elections in June, where Macron will need a working   
   majority to govern effectively.   
      
   “I call on all patriots to join us,” she said. “France will   
   need you more than ever in the months ahead.”   
      
   Le Pen said she got 11 million votes. If confirmed, that would   
   be double the score of her father, National Front co-founder   
   Jean-Marie Le Pen, at the same stage in the 2002 presidential   
   election.   
      
   The candidates’ polar-opposite visions presented the 47 million   
   registered voters with the starkest possible choice. Le Pen’s   
   closed borders faced off against Macron’s open ones; his   
   commitment to free trade ran against her proposals to protect   
   the French from global economic competition and immigration.   
   Her desire to free France from the EU and the shared euro   
   currency contrasted with his argument that both are essential   
   for the future of Europe’s third-largest economy.   
      
   As well as capitalizing on voter rejection of the left-right   
   monopoly on power, Macron also got lucky.   
      
   One of his most dangerous opponents, conservative former Prime   
   Minister Francois Fillon, was hobbled by allegations that his   
   family benefited from cushy taxpayer-funded jobs for years.   
      
   On the left, the Socialist Party imploded, its candidate   
   abandoned by voters who wanted to punish Hollande, France’s   
   most unpopular president since World War II. Hollande himself   
   realized he was unelectable and decided not to run again.   
      
   Macron takes charge of a nation that, when Britain leaves the   
   EU in 2019, will become the EU’s only member with nuclear   
   weapons and a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.   
      
   He has promised a France that would stand up to Russian   
   President Vladimir Putin but that also would seek to work with   
   the Russian leader on what he says will be one of his top   
   priorities: fighting the Islamic State group, whose extremists   
   have claimed or inspired multiple attacks in France since 2015.   
      
   France has been in a state of emergency since then and 50,000   
   security forces were used to safeguard Sunday’s vote.   
      
   Macron is expected to keep up French military operations   
   against extremists in Iraq and Syria and Africa’s Sahel region,   
   and maintain pressure on Russia over Ukraine and support for   
   Syrian President Bashar Assad.   
      
   With the United States, Macron says he wants continued   
   intelligence-sharing and co-operation at the United Nations and   
   hopes to persuade Trump not to pull the U.S. out of a global   
   emissions-cutting deal against climate change.   
      
   Domestically, Macron inherits a deeply troubled and divided   
   nation of 67 million people. The French are riven by anxieties   
   about terrorism and chronic unemployment, worried about the   
      
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