Anissa Rami, writer for Bondy Blog, reports from suburbs north of Paris ahead of France’s second-round presidential vote
tanley did not vote in the first round of the presidential election on 10 April, and he said he would not vote in theon 24 April either. The 27-year-old from Bobigny, north of Paris, stands by his decision. As a young father who had just finished his studies, he was interested in politics. But he had been “disappointed” by the left since the five-year term of socialist president François Hollande – presented by many as having hammered the last nail into the left’s coffin.
Under the afternoon sunshine on the town’s esplanade, a handful of teenagers got ready to begin a football match. In the entrances to apartment buildings, the name on everyone’s lips was Jean-Luc Mélenchon, [the leftwing candidate who was narrowly eliminated in the first round, leaving Macron to face the far-right Marine Le Pen]. Farid, 19, who did not want to give his real name, who lives with his mother, said he had lost interest in politics.
The town was divided, reflected in the first-round scores where Mélenchon came first with 36% of the votes, followed by Macron on 31% and an abstention rate of 23%. Malek’s neighbour, Leïla, who did not want her real name published, is a young mother of two, living with her mother in the flat where she grew up, and was a fervent “abstentionist”.
Leïla had just woken up when Malek knocked at her door with a leaflet. She did not believe in Le Pen’s programme, an anti-immigration platform that would prioritise French people over foreigners for housing, jobs, benefit and health, and ban the Muslim headscarf in all public places, including the street.
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