Emmanuel Macron wins second term as French president, beats far-right rival Marine Le Pen

French President Emmanuel Macron won re-election on Sunday with 58% of the vote, compared with 41% for far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.

Congratulations came flooding in from across Europe and the world. However, Macron faces many challenges ahead, as he seeks to govern a deeply divided country.

Macron acknowledged that many people voted for him simply to counter Le Pen, while commending their “sense of duty” and “attachment to the Republic.”

He vowed to find the answers to the “anger and disagreements” that led many French people to vote for Le Pen.

Le Pen called her score, an increase from 2017, a “resounding victory” and vowed to fight during the legislative elections in June.

French parliamentary elections in June will define the make-up of the government Macron must rely on to see through reform plans that would be an unprecedented shake-up of France’s welfare state, the news agency writes.

Newly elected presidents can usually expect to get a majority in parliament whenever legislative elections directly follow the presidential vote, due to generally low turnout among supporters of all the defeated candidates.

However, in her concession speech, Marine Le Pen sounded defiant, promising a strong opposition bloc in parliament.

At the same time, hard-left politician Jean-Luc Melenchon has his mindset on becoming prime minister after securing the bulk of the left-wing vote in the first round.

Melenchon hopes to carry that momentum into the parliamentary elections and force Macron into an awkward and stalemate-prone “cohabitation” with him in charge of a left-wing majority, writes Reuters.

Even if Macron’s allies do get a majority or a workable coalition pact, he will also have to deal with resistance in the streets to his reform plans, notably a pension reform that would gradually raise the minimum age to 65 from 62.