Castes is a graduate of the same prestigious university - the National School of Administration in Paris - as President Emmanuel Macron, but the similarities end there.
The alliance of left-wing parties, which scored a shock victory in France's early parliamentary elections earlier this month, has agreed to nominate little-known Lucie Castes as its candidate to be the country's next prime minister.
Castes, director of the Paris city's Directorate of Financing and Purchases, was nominated by the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition after weeks of fighting over who should lead France's next government.
The NNP spent weeks haggling over candidates, with previously proposed names such as far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon and compromise options such as Huguet Belleau rejected.
Castes is a graduate of the same prestigious university - the National School of Administration in Paris - as President Emmanuel Macron, but the similarities end there. The possible next prime minister is an activist who has spent much of his life defending French public services from being bailed out.
Castes' nomination comes after the NNP suffered a humiliating political setback last week when its candidate for head of the National Assembly - the fourth-ranking post in the French government - was defeated thanks to a surprise alliance between Macron's party and right-wing lawmakers.
The loss showed that in a fractured parliament with no party close to a parliamentary majority, the left could face challenges in forming a government because it lacks a majority.
The NNP previously claimed that its victory in the June 30 and July 7 parliamentary elections gave it the right to name a prime minister and cabinet.
But President Emmanuel Macron immediately rejected the coalition's choice, Lucie Castes. In his first interview since the election, Macron said he would not appoint a new government until mid-August at the earliest and that his current cabinet would remain in an interim capacity until the Summer Olympics in Paris, which begin this week.
Only the French president has the power to appoint the prime minister and the cabinet. In theory, his election should reflect the political balance in parliament, but there is no constitutionally defined term for election.
The NNP has about 190 seats, Macron's party and its centrist allies - about 160, and the far-right National Assembly and its allies - about 140, i.e. none of them is close to an absolute majority - 289 seats. The remaining seats are distributed among other parties.
"No one won," Macron said, and "no one can carry out his program alone." He reiterated his call for the parties to put aside some of their differences and form a broad coalition.
France does not have the culture of other European countries such as Italy, Germany or the Netherlands, where lengthy negotiations on a coalition government and its program are regularly held. Macron has said he believes a coalition is possible. He argued that if France's political parties managed to put aside their differences to block the far right from power, within the framework of the so-called "Republican Front", they should be able to work together after the election.
"The responsibility of these parties is to do something that all European democracies do, which is not in our traditions, but which, I believe, our countrymen expect," Macron said, adding that "compromise" was not a "dirty word."
But left-wing leaders, who believe the NPP should govern because it won the most seats, reacted angrily to Macron's comments.
"The president refuses to accept the results of the elections and wants to impose his "New Republican Front" on us, forcing us to abandon our program and enter into an alliance with him," said Jean-Luc Mélenchon. This is out of the question." | BGNES
