French elections: let’s wait two hours
The first round of the French presidential election is taking place today. At 8pm or 9 pm, we should know who are the two candidates qualified for the second round.
Hundreds and hundreds of French citizens invaded Brussels Expo this morning to vote. More than 35 polling stations were open to allow all the French expats to tell which candidate they would like to replace François Hollande over the upcoming 5 years. At 11.00 am, most of the voters had to queue more than 30 minutes before entering the pooling booth, while some of them did not know yet who they would vote for and only decided at the very last second.
The 2017 Presidential election has been being really special so far. It is indeed probably the most mysterious election since the 5th Republic entered into force, in 1958. According to many surveys which were published few days ago, 4 candidates (Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen, François Fillon and Jean-Luc Mélenchon) could be qualified to the second round, as they potentially could get about 20% of the votes. And for the first time in the history of the 5th Republic, both the left-wing and the right-wing candidates could be eliminated after the first round. The Presidential elections could therefore make the traditional bipartism over.
As the election is very uncertain, the main candidates have then led a very intense campaign since the beginning of the year. Three big debates have been held over the last two months, and they all held political meetings almost every day. As every French today, The Brusselian French expats were involved in this campaign. About 50,000 French citizens currently live in the Belgian capital, and more than 100,000 in whole Belgium.
This is why some candidates popped down in Brussels to try to convince the French expats. When he was not candidate yet, Emmanuel Macron came to a Politico event on 18 April 2016 and he presented the political movement he had just set up few days before, En marche, as well as he shared his views on economy and society. More recently, Benoît Hamon, the socialist candidate, also came to Brussels last 21 March and hosted a proper political meeting with European socialist leaders.
A recent survey showed that Emmanuel Macron could receive the greatest number of votes in BeNeLux. We however have seen last year the political polls are not always trustful, as well as the expats do not provide an overall picture of France…. So be patient, we should know more about the results in two hours.
