Defeated hopefuls unite behind centrist

PARIS — France’s political mainstream, shut out of the presidency by an angry electorate, united on Monday to call on voters to back centrist Emmanuel Macron and reject Marine Le Pen’s populist nationalism.

Politicians on the moderate left and right, including the Socialist and Republican party losers in Sunday’s first-round vote, manoeuvred to block Le Pen’s path to power in the May 7 runoff. Voters narrowed the presidential field from 11 to two. France’s presidential election is widely seen as a litmus test for the populist wave that last year prompted Britain to vote to leave the European Union and U.S. voters to elect Donald Trump.

The defeated far-left candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon, pointedly refused to back Macron, and Le Pen’s National Front is hoping to do the once unthinkable and peel away voters historically opposed to a party long tainted by racism and anti-Semitism.

“The voters who voted for Mr. Melenchon are angry voters. They can be in agreement with us,” National Front vice-president Steeve Brios said. He said that they express a choice “outside the system.”

Choosing from inside the system is no longer an option. Voters rejected the two mainstream parties that have alternated power for decades, in favour of Le Pen and the untested Macron, who has never held elected office and who founded his own political movement just last year.

Turnout was 78 per cent, down slightly from 79 per cent in the first round of presidential voting in 2012. Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon, whose party holds a majority in the legislature, got just six per cent. Socialist President Francois Hollande is the most unpopular in modern French record-keeping. He didn’t seek re-election.

Both the centre-right and centreleft fell in behind Macron, whose optimistic vision of a tolerant France and a united Europe with open borders is a stark contrast to Le Pen’s darker, inward-looking “French-first” platform that calls for closed borders, tougher security, less immigration and dropping the shared euro currency to return to the French franc.

Macron came in first in Sunday’s vote, with just over 23 per cent; Marine Le Pen had 21 per cent.

FRANCOIS MORI/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS French centrist presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, seen Monday during a ceremony marking the 102nd anniversary of the slaying of Armenians by Ottoman Turks, will face far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the May 7 runoff of the presidential election.