Mélenchon, leading figure of the French left, declares that the left is “ready to govern”

The French left is “ready to govern,” leading leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon said on Sunday, after forecasts showed a broad left-wing alliance could be the largest group in parliament, despite earlier expectations of a far-right victory.

“Our people have clearly rejected the worst-case scenario,” declared the three-time presidential candidate for the La France Insoumise (LFI) party.

Left-wing parties including LFI, the Socialist Party (PS), the Greens and the Communist Party joined forces last month to form the New Popular Front (NFP).

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal “must go… The New Popular Front is ready to govern,” Mélenchon declared.

It is not yet clear who the alliance’s leading candidate for prime minister might be, with Mélenchon a controversial figure even among some supporters of his own party.

Attal said he would present his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron on Monday.

But he added that if his resignation was refused he was prepared to stay in office “as long as duty requires” with the Paris Olympics due to begin in three weeks.

Projections based on voting samples from four major polling agencies and viewed by AFP The results show no group on track to secure an absolute majority, with the left-wing NFP ahead of both Macron and Attal’s centrist Ensemble alliance and the far-right National Rally (RN).

The left-wing group was expected to obtain between 172 and 215 seats, the presidential alliance between 150 and 180 and the RN – which was hoping for an absolute majority – between 115 and 155, surprisingly in third position.

PS leader Olivier Faure called for “democracy” within the NFP so that they can work together.

“To move forward together, we need democracy in our ranks,” he said.

“No external remark will impose itself on us,” he declared in a thinly veiled criticism of Mélenchon.

Raphael Glucksmann, co-chair of the small pro-European Place Publique party within the alliance, said everyone would have to “behave like adults”.

In the projections, “we are ahead, but in a divided parliament… so people are going to have to behave like adults,” he said.

“People are going to have to talk to each other,” he said.

Macron took the gamble of organizing early elections after the far right beat its centrist allies in the European elections.