French press review 13 June 2017

Remember the mystery surrounding the word "covfefe" in a recent Trump tweet? Well, that typo and the subsequent deletion of the message it appeared in have prompted a Democrat demand for a change to US law. And there's plenty of analysis of the outcome of last Sunday's first round parliamentary elections.

America is to have a Covfefe Act, as several French papers report.

Several of this morning's papers note that a recent incomprehensible Twitter message from US President Trump, including the non-word "covfefe", has spurred a serious legislative effort aimed at preventing the president from erasing his many misspelled missives and other online messages.

The Covfefe Act was introduced yesterday by a Democratic member of Congress.

Trump frequently deletes Twitter messages   especially those with spelling errors   calling into question whether he is wrongly altering the record of his time in office.

If the law is eventually passed, it will ensure that deleted tweets are documented for archival purposes, and will make deleting tweets a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

At least the debate has given substance and meaning to the word "covfefe". The rather stretched acronym in the proposed legislation stands for "Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement."

So now we know.

Maybe they should just buy the president a spell-checker?

Political extremes lose ground in parliamentary polls

Otherwise, our colleagues in the public prints continue to rake over the ashes of Sunday's parliamentary election first round.

Le Monde says the really big losers were at the extremes of the political spectrum, with Le Pen's far right National Front and Jean-Luc Mélenchon's hard left "France won't take it lying down anymore" party both getting the stuffing knocked out of them.

The truth is, with so much stuffing on show as Macron's masses calmly swept the old icons away, no one really escaped unscathed.

Why did so many people stay at home?

Le Monde also attempts to explain the poor voter turnout, Sunday's 51 percent abstention rate setting a dismal record in modern French politics.

Voters are worn out after a long sequence of party presidential primaries, the presidential poll itself and now the parliamentary pitter-patter. They no longer have much interest in politics anyway. And an awful lot of people felt that Macron's candidates were going to coast home.

Many traditional voters stayed away because they feel disoriented by the new political landscape being shaped by President Macron, Le Monde says.

Deprived, in most constituencies, of a contender with a chance of winning who represented either standard left-wing or right-wing values, voters stayed away on the basis that Macron should be given a chance. They don't necessarily support him but they won't stand in his way either.

That is a situation which could obviously turn very much against Macron and his probable parliamentary majority when it comes to selling unpopular legislation to the weary, uncommitted masses.

And the experts agree that things are unlikely to be any busier at the polling stations for next Sunday's second round. With only one three-way battle, a lot of voters feel they are left without a candidate to support. And so they'll stay home. Again.

Humility the key word for Macron's marching masses

Right-wing paper Le Figaro notes that Macron's Marching Republicans (as opposed to former president Nicolas Sarkozy's static ones) have been understating the scale of their first-round victory, instead playing the humility card.

No celebrations in fancy Paris restaurants, no triumphalism. Especially, no television cameras. If there were any celebrations in the presidential palace on Sunday night, they were low key. The marching president apparently spent most of his time on the phone to leading candidates, telling them that the job was only half done and to get on with clinching victory next Sunday.

Macron is clearly aware of the danger of negative public reaction posed by a massive parliamentary majority, especially with an administration which seems determined to keep its head down and stay out of the way of the journalists.

Ruling party spokesmen have been reminding us that the French upper house, the Senate, has not changed its political colours, broadly non-marching Republican and is unlikely to do so in the wake of the next partial elections which are due in September.