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France's Macron reveals gender equal list of political outsiders | |
(about 3 hours later) | |
The party of French President-elect Emmanuel Macron has unveiled the names of 428 candidates for parliamentary elections next month. | |
Only 24 of those chosen are outgoing MPs from the current parliament. | |
Some 52% come from civil society and exactly half are women, the secretary-general of La République En Marche (Republic on the Move) said. | |
Richard Ferrand said the choices marked "the definitive return of citizens to the heart of our political life". | |
The movement received more than 19,000 applications, Mr Ferrand said at a news conference, with 1,700 telephone interviews conducted with candidates. | |
The average age of the list is 46 "compared to 60 years for the average of outgoing MPs", he said. | |
The youngest candidate is 24 years old, while the oldest is 72. | |
Mr Ferrand confirmed that Mr Macron's ex-cabinet colleague Manuel Valls - the former prime minister who has now burned his boats with his Socialists - had not been selected. | |
But the party will not be running a candidate against him. | |
France had been waiting to see if the party list would live up to Mr Macron's pledge to clean up France's public life. | |
Why are the candidates being unveiled now? | |
Mr Macron was only elected on Sunday and the two-round parliamentary vote takes place on 11 and 18 June. But with only one month to go, every political party is now focusing on the race for the National Assembly. | Mr Macron was only elected on Sunday and the two-round parliamentary vote takes place on 11 and 18 June. But with only one month to go, every political party is now focusing on the race for the National Assembly. |
His recently rebranded party is only 13 months old and has no MPs, and he needs to show he will have not just a mandate but the power in parliament to push through his programme. | |
Are there still more to be selected? | |
The next president wants to fight all of France's 577 constituencies, but only 428 candidates were announced on Thursday (214 men and 214 women). | |
Nearly 20,000 people applied and a few thousand only added their names in the last few days following the election. | |
Some of the names announced so far include: | |
How are the candidates chosen? | How are the candidates chosen? |
We know the Macron team have set out five conditions: | We know the Macron team have set out five conditions: |
What's wrong with Manuel Valls? | What's wrong with Manuel Valls? |
When the Socialist ex-prime minister announced this week that his own party was dead and he wanted to be a candidate for the new president's party, the initial response was lukewarm - and then he was turned down for not yet "meeting the criteria". | |
Opponents have seized on the decision as treachery, and by Wednesday Twitter was alive with the hashtag #VallsEnMarcheVersPoleEmploi (Valls on the move to the job centre). | Opponents have seized on the decision as treachery, and by Wednesday Twitter was alive with the hashtag #VallsEnMarcheVersPoleEmploi (Valls on the move to the job centre). |
Republican party leader François Baroin said the way Mr Valls had been treated "revealed a great deal about the sectarian spirit of a movement that wanted to be modern but in three days in its methods already belonged to the past". | Republican party leader François Baroin said the way Mr Valls had been treated "revealed a great deal about the sectarian spirit of a movement that wanted to be modern but in three days in its methods already belonged to the past". |