Parliament majority attainable, says Macron's MP selection chief

For investors and pundits it is the big question-mark hanging over Emmanuel Macron; the 39-year-old centrist looks certain to win a runoff for the French presidency, but how can his one-year-old upstart party win the parliamentary majority six weeks later that he needs to implement his programme?

Jean-Paul Delevoye, the political veteran in charge of making that happen, says the palpable disarray of France's two traditional governing parties has opened up the space for En Marche! (Onwards!) to do just that.

The candidate of the ruling Socialists, the far-left Benoit Hamon, managed only 6 percent of the first-round vote - and already, some leading Socialists on the right of their party

who declined to back him have made overtures to Macron.

Meanwhile the conservative Republicans candidate Francois Fillon left his party in the lurch and without an effective figurehead when he declined to step down over damaging allegations of financial impropriety, which he denied. He stepped down from front-line politics on Monday. "There will be a break-up of the Socialist party, which may have competing candidates in some constituencies, and a split of the conservatives between those who will seek revenge and those ready to cooperate," Delevoye told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

Macron, whom surveys strongly favor to beat far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the May 7 runoff, has based much of his pitch on a bid to transcend a party political system that has come to seem closed-off and remote from citizens' real concerns. French lawmakers are usually career politicians with little private-sector experience who have climbed through party ranks and local elected office before being selected from Paris to run for parliament often outside their native region.

Macron has said he will field at least 50 percent of candidates with no prior lawmaking experience, and 50 percent women. In January, he launched a call for applications online and received more than 14,000.