AP PHOTOS: France celebrates after coalition of leftist parties thwarts far-right’s push for power

PARIS (AP) — The surprising fireworks lit up Paris’s Place de la Republique.

For the hundreds of French individuals who took to the streets on Sunday to have fun the outcomes of a parliamentary run-off vote, the result was a giant aid.

For the leaders of the leftist New Fashionable Entrance coalition that unexpectedly thwarted the far-right’s advance, it was time to have fun. Olivier Faure, the chief of the Socialist Celebration, clenched his fist throughout his victory speech after the ultimate spherical of voting.

The founding father of hard-left occasion France Unbowed, Jean-Luc Melenchon, pledged to implement all his marketing campaign guarantees. Simpler stated than accomplished, critics stated, with the nation now dealing with a hung Parliament after not one of the fundamental teams was capable of collect a majority of 289 seats to control alone.

After polls advised forward of Sunday’s voting that the far-right was on the gate to energy for the primary time since World Warfare II, the victory of the New Fashionable Entrance got here as a shock.

Whereas far-right supporters stayed at house, others gathered exterior to have fun the rejection of Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration Nationwide Rally occasion. On Paris’ Place de la Republique, folks chanted collectively, waved blue-white-red flags and lit fireworks. There have been additionally a couple of tensions and a few bicycles had been burned throughout the evening, however no main incidents had been reported.

And it was not simply Paris which celebrated. Demonstrators waved French flags and set off smoke flares within the western metropolis of Nantes, whereas In Lyon, two girls sat on both facet of a big rose, a longstanding image of the Socialist Celebration.