By Michael Birnbaum @ The Washington Post, May 11
PARIS — French President-elect Emmanuel Macron’s party on Thursday announced a list of legislative candidates that is heavy on political novices, a sign of France’s reshaped and unsettled landscape ahead of crucial June parliamentary elections.
The 429 announced candidates, of whom more than half are new to politics and half are women, were a first indication of the direction of Macron’s still-fluid party, which the president-elect — himself a relative political neophyte — formed just a year ago and which has no representatives in Parliament. In a measure of the challenge of building a movement from scratch, candidates were still being vetted hours before the announcement, and the party said after the list’s release that at least five people were included mistakenly. As many as 147 additional candidates are still being finalized.
The legislative elections in June will determine whether Macron, a 39-year-old centrist who was swept into the presidency on Sunday, will have a free hand to pursue his ambitious agenda [.....]