The Press in France | Stormy skies for uncertain elections

As France votes this Sunday in the first round of tense legislative elections, our columnist Laura-Julie Perreault travels across France from the Côte d’Azur to Brittany to speak to voters and politicians attracted to the extremes. Or not. Today, the fears of Marseillais from diversity.

(Marseille) Ribbons of wind raise dust on Place Jean-Jaurès, reminding us that a storm warning is in effect. But it’s another storm – political, this one – that Carla Tavares fears as she goes shopping for her daughter’s wedding, which will take place in August.

“I’m afraid that if Marine [Le Pen] and her National Rally win, she will want to get rid of the blacks and the Arabs, who she talks about all the time. She will throw us all out,” says the mother of four, originally from Angola, a Portuguese citizen, but a resident of Marseille for more than 25 years.

She thinks the subject deserves more than a conversation at the corner of a table and, laden with her new curtains, she invites me for a drink in a café-bar adjoining the square.

On the eve of the first round of the legislative elections, she has a lot on her heart.

There are many in his case in Marseille. Official statistics estimate that 10% of the population of the large Provençal city is of immigrant origin, but you only need to spend a few hours there to see that the diversity is much greater in the city center. And this is true on the market on Place Jean-Jaurès where traders from the Maghreb jostle with sellers from sub-Saharan Africa. Among them, we find a good number of French citizens, but also workers with work permits and undocumented immigrants.

The distorted image of immigrants

Carla Tavares, who also lived in Lisbon, raised her children in this “city of immigrants”, as she affectionately calls Marseille. She has worked for a quarter of a century as a cook in a residence for the elderly, a job that she loves. She is now afraid of losing everything if the National Rally takes the reins of the National Assembly after the second round, which will take place on July 7.

When she listens to the politicians of this party talking about foreigners who live in France, she does not recognize herself. “I never had access to social housing. I don’t receive a penny of public assistance,” she says. Our neighbor at the table gets involved. “Same thing for me,” notes Linda Charni, who can no longer stand people talking about immigrants like leeches drying up the French social system. “If we weren’t here, who would care for the elderly? The ill ? France needs its immigrants,” says the Franco-Tunisian, who works with young children.

The latter, who has dual nationality, intends to use her right to vote to support the New Popular Front, the left-wing coalition that brings together the socialists, the environmentalists and the candidates of La France Insoumise. In the latest polls published on the eve of the first round, this coalition came a good second behind the National Rally.

We also expect a fierce confrontation between the radical right and the left during the second round. Calls for politicians close to Emmanuel Macron to step aside in favor of the left during the second vote have already been heard even before the French appeared in the voting booths for the first time. For the moment, they have remained unanswered.

“It will be war”

A former truck driver turned Uber driver – “to see my youngest grow up” – Mohammed Macchi believes that, whatever happens, a National Rally in power, with the young Jordan Bardella in the prime minister’s seat, would not have a free hand.

“If they are elected, they will quickly realize that they cannot implement a good part of their ideas,” believes the Frenchman of Algerian origin. For budgetary reasons, through political inexperience, but also because civil society will not bend its back, especially if the National Rally calls into question the jus soli, which allows the children of immigrants to obtain French nationality, or if they adopt discriminatory laws against dual nationals, as is planned in the party’s program.

“Here in Marseille, if there is provocation coming from Paris, there will be riots. We have seen it in the past,” he predicts.

“It will be war,” says Carla Tavares, hoping that the France she loves, the Marseille she loves, will not go there.