By Ayya Lmahamad
The first round of the French presidential election was held on April 10. The final results of the first round demonstrated that the Armenian lobby's attempt to interfere in the elections and elect a leader more sympathetic to Armenian interests was a complete failure.
The Armenian lobby made large bets on candidates with questionable backgrounds, such as Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour, and Valerie Pecresse. However, the current president, Emmanuel Macron, who took first place in the first round with 27.84 percent of the vote, and the leader of the extreme right-wing National Front, Marine Le Pen, who took second place with 23.15 percent, advanced to the second round of elections.
With the announcement of the French elections, these three candidates began to make all kinds of unrealistic promises to the local Armenian diaspora, particularly regarding Karabakh. All in the name of getting their votes. Zemmour and Pecresse even decided to travel to Armenia and illegally to Azerbaijan's Kabarakh, and Le Pen especially distinguished herself during the election campaign. She stated that it had been a long-held childhood dream of hers to see Nagorno-Karabakh rejoin Armenia. It is very interesting how she dreams of reigniting a conflict that has recently ended rather than ending wars and conflicts that are killing people.
It's quite a strange logic for someone running for president of France to think about unrealistic Armenian fantasies but not about the French people. By the way, the French did not approve of the candidate's behavior, and as a result, she received fewer votes than Macron.
Marine Le Pen has long been known for her Islamophobia and hatred of all Turkic peoples, as her entire ideology is based on the notion that non-Christian nations and peoples cannot be a part of European culture. She is primarily popular among conservative residents of small towns and the countryside who are upset that migrants are bringing their traditions into the traditional foundation of French society. That is why the National Front program she leads is based on limiting migration into the country and achieving the country's exit from the EU.
France now has much more pressing issues than the Armenian lobby's whining – social problems, and the French people tend to vote for the candidate who promises to solve them. According to pre-election polls in France, voters are concerned about a decline in the population's standard and quality of life, religious and ethnic contradictions, an increase in the number of offenses, crime, problems with migrants and the demographic situation, and issues of social infrastructure.
Given this, the provision of food to the population ranks first among the current president Emmanuel Macron's social promises. Macron stated during his election campaign that if re-elected, he intends to develop and implement a "food stamp program" to protect the poor and middle class from rising food prices and a new crisis. Macron's entire attention will be focused in these areas. He'll have to explain why he's running for a second term.
Furthermore, unlike Le Pen, President Macron campaigned on the themes of strengthening Europe's unity and active participation in NATO.
It is worth noting that The Economist predicts President Emmanuel Macron will win easily in the second round of the presidential election. The statistical model predicts that he will receive 74 percent of the vote, while Marine Le Pen will receive only 26 percent.
The results show that voters are not concerned with global processes or fictitious Armenian problems, but rather with France's domestic social problems that must be addressed.
In a nutshell, the results of the first round of presidential elections revealed that Armenians have suffered another fiasco. The Armenian lobby's hopes that the new French president will support their claims against Azerbaijan are unlikely to come true. When it comes to electing a president, ordinary French citizens want the most dignified candidate who will prioritize them.
The failure of the Armenian candidates hit the Armenian lobby hard, demonstrating that its influence is not as strong as it claims. The talk of a powerful Armenian lobby has nothing to do with reality.