“Lavrov Accuses France of Election Meddling, Claims Vote Rigged”
According to Sputnik, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, referring to the second round of the French parliamentary elections, which started today (Sunday), emphasized that the second round of these elections does not resemble democracy.
Lavrov said in this regard: The first stage of the parliamentary elections (France) has been held. They have two stages and the second stage is probably engineered to manipulate the wishes of those who voted in the first stage.
He emphasized: When some candidates who were convinced to participate (in the elections) can withdraw at the will of someone who, as is known, intends to win over the conservatives and populists, then (this election) does not have much in common with democracy.
The senior Russian diplomat stated: If the elections in France were only one stage, this country would face great changes.
In the second phase of French elections, 577 members of parliament will be elected. At the end of the first stage, representatives of the far-right party “National Rally” led by Marine Le Pen and chaired by Jordan Bardella won with 33.15 percent of the votes. The left-wing “New Popular Front” party came in second place with 27.99 percent, followed by French President Emmanuel Macron’s “Together” coalition with only 20.04 percent of the vote.
Immediately after the end of the first phase, Macron called for a coalition against the extreme right, and the leftists welcomed this request. In the following, the candidates who were in third place in terms of the number of votes, hoping for the protest vote of their supporters against the “National Rally”, withdrew en masse (224 candidates in total).