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Geopolitics

France And Russia, Why Democracy Needs Healthy Opposition

Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron during their meeting in Versailles, on May 29
Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron during their meeting in Versailles, on May 29

"A Masterstroke," "A Tsunami," "The Takeover." Newspapers in France summoned their best metaphors this morning to describe what already looks like a landslide — yes, another favorite electoral metaphor — in favor of Emmanuel Macron's party in yesterday's first round of legislative voting.


Ahead of next Sunday's second and final round, the new president's party looks on target to have between 400 and 440 seats in the 577-member National Assembly. That would hand the 39-year-old president the largest majority enjoyed by a French leader under the current Fifth Republic, founded by Charles de Gaulle in 1958.


The remaining members in the parliament will likely be split between the three major remaining parties: center-right Les Républicains, far-right National Front, and far-left France Unbowed, while the Socialist Party that ruled for the past five years has been largely annihilated. At first glance, it seems as though an overwhelming majority of the French electorate has rallied behind Macron — a bold and talented newcomer — to give him carte blanche to push forward a sweeping series of reforms of the country's economic and political system that many agree are long overdue.


Dig a bit deeper, however, and we see a less rosy picture for the state of French democracy: a record-high 51.3% of the electorate did not turn out to vote yesterday, the highest abstention rate in memory. The cold hard reality is that Macron will likely govern with an unprecedented majority based on the support of less than one in every five voters.


As Le Figaro notes in its editorial this morning, Macron has "dynamited it all." But beyond the questions about the democratic legitimacy of such a majority, the expected result raises concerns about how the unrepresented opposition will make its voice heard over the next five years. Especially when Macron is planning to use executive decrees to swiftly pass a labor reform that goes well beyond the one passed just over a year ago, and which had protesters bringing the country to a standstill for weeks.


A healthy democracy is more than freely elected rulers — it also must be nourished by a real opposition. On the other side of the European continent, this is a fact that Russians will express today, in the streets. All things being relative, President Vladimir Putin is a popular leader who was voted into office. But his ruling majority has long remained unchallenged in the halls of the country's institutions. But today, on Russia Day, thousands are expected to take to the streets of major Russian cities in anti-government demonstrations, to show that when their voice can't be heard in the halls of power, opponents will always find other ways to speak out. The movement is led by Alexey Navalny, a lawyer and anti-corruption activist, who himself has reportedly already been arrested this morning, as he was in March during another nationwide protest.


Like everything that's man-made, democracy is imperfect. It requires finding a subtle balance between determination and care, action and patience, majority and opposition. Stifle your rivals and, sooner or later, they'll come back to haunt you. At that point, the temptation for either side is to take aim at democracy itself. Both French and Russian history have textbook examples of both.

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Society

Italy's Right-Wing Government Turns Up The Heat On 'Gastronationalism'

Rome has been strongly opposed to synthetic foods, insect-based flours and health warnings on alcohol, and aggressive lobbying by Giorgia Meloni's right-wing government against nutritional labeling has prompted accusations in Brussels of "gastronationalism."

Dough is run through a press to make pasta

Creation of home made pasta

Karl De Meyer et Olivier Tosseri

ROME — On March 23, the Italian Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty, Francesco Lollobrigida, announced that Rome would ask UNESCO to recognize Italian cuisine as a piece of intangible cultural heritage.

On March 28, Lollobrigida, who is also Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's brother-in-law, promised that Italy would ban the production, import and marketing of food made in labs, especially artificial meat — despite the fact that there is still no official request to market it in Europe.

Days later, Italian Eurodeputy Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of fascist leader Benito Mussolini and member of the Forza Italia party, which is part of the governing coalition in Rome, caused a sensation in the European Parliament. On the sidelines of the plenary session, Sophia Loren's niece organized a wine tasting, under the slogan "In Vino Veritas," to show her strong opposition (and that of her government) to an Irish proposal to put health warnings on alcohol bottles. At the end of the press conference, around 11am, she showed her determination by drinking from the neck of a bottle of wine, to great applause.

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