More from "The Articles of Deconfederation." Here are some international politics this time around.
The
French presidential elections, 2017, were held on 23 April and 7 May, 2017, to elect the tenth president of the French Fourth Republic. Incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy, of the
Republican Party, declined to run for a third term after serving for ten years from 2007 onward. The
Socialist Party's Oliver Faure and Jean-Luc Mélenchon of
La France Insoumise ("France Unbound" in English) were the top two most voted-for candidates after the end of the first round and thus moved on to face each other in the second round, which Faure won by a relatively comfortable margin on 7 May.
The presidential election was followed by a legislative election one month later, in which La France Insoumise failed to win any new seats. The Socialists won a majority in the legislative assembly, securing control of 304 seats in total.
Christian Jacob, the nominee for the Republicans, led in national polling initially, but was soon overtaken by Mélenchon, with Faure coming in as a definite third after securing the nomination of the Socialist Party. By the middle of December, however, it had become clear that Jacob was struggling to maintain a spot in the contest, and the polls tightened considerably, with Mélenchon leading Faure by an average of one point to half a point. At the same time, Marine Le Pen of the
Front National (National Front in English) pulled ahead of most other small parties' candidates to take fourth place near the end of the first round. François Bayrou, coming in fifth, was the candidate with the lowest polling vote share to be invited to the first major debate.
Mélenchon won a narrow victory in the first round, beating Faure for first place by 105,000 votes. This marked the first time in the history of the Fourth Republic that a second round candidate came from a party that was not considered part of the establishment centre-left or centre-right. This seemed to work against Mélenchon as the second round commenced, with most voters who had favored Jacob, Bayrou, and Lassale moving towards supporting Faure. Many polled voters expressed the shared view that Mélenchon was
too outside the scope of the establishment for their liking, and 39% of voters said that if Mélenchon were to be elected president, the emotion they would most likely feel immediately after would be "fear."
When voting for the second round had finished, Faure maintained a lead during the entire the process of vote counting, but this margin was never large enough to prompt Mélenchon's concession of defeat. By the time that 73% of the votes had been counted, Faure's vote total skyrocketed ahead of Mélenchon's, as votes from northern and western urban areas, Socialist strongholds, began to be counted. Mélenchon conceded defeat to Faure at two in the morning on 8 May.
Mélenchon coming so close to being elected was rooted in immigration and terror-related fear among the French, with the Saudi Arabian civil war displacing millions of persons, tens of thousands of them coming to France for refuge. Complaints in organized labor, stemming from welfare and union-recognition cuts made by Sarkozy, pushed the working class vote in favor of Mélenchon and helped him win a majority in many far-northern and far-southern departments, whose economies relied mainly on shrinking industrial sectors.
The results of the election were officiated on 11 May by the French Constitutional Council. Faure took office on 14 May, naming Luc Carvounas as his Prime Minister on 16 May.
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Xu Qiliang (Chinese: 许其亮; pinyin: Xǔ Qíliàng; born March 1950) is a Chinese politician and air force general currently serving as the president of the Centralist Republic of China, as well as the commander of the Chinese Fascist-Republican party and the chairman of the Chinese Central Military Commission. As commander of the Fascist-Republican party, Xu holds the ability to order the immediate passage and enforcement of any and all laws and codes, and holds complete control of the Chinese Armed Forces.
Before his ascension to the post of president, Xu served as General of the State Air Force, a position absorbed into the duties of president after 25 November, 2011. Xu was born to a wealthy family with connections to the state government, his parents being personal friends of then president Zhou Enlai. This allowed Xu an easy acceptance into the state military, where he was almost immediately given officerial duties at the age of 21. In 2007, at the age of 57, Xu was given the position of General of the State Air Force by president Lien Chan.
With Chan's exit of the office in 2011, after what many outside China suspected to be a series of power moves by Xu to force Chan's resignation, Xu was made president by the State Social-Military Council. Since his ascension, Xu has taken extensive action to expand the powers of the president and the size of the state military. Outside analysts tend to describe Xu's tenure as a return to fascism, and a stark change in comparison to the reformist stance taken by president Chang. Xu has used his powers to crack down on social deviance and political dissent, and severely increased the rate at which the death penalty is used to deal with criminal offenses of all varieties.
Articles of De-Confederation:
New York Legislative election, 2008
New York Progressive Party
Midatlantica Legislative election, 2017
Carolina Presidential Election, 2017; Matt Watson
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French Presidential Election, 2017; Xu Qiliang