Macron, Le Pen to face off in bid for French presidency

Centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right populist Marine Le Pen advanced Sunday to a runoff in France’s presidential election, remaking the country’s political landscape and setting up a showdown over its participation in the European Union.

French politicians on the left and right immediately urged voters to block Le Pen’s path to power in the May 7 runoff, saying her virulently nationalist anti-eu and anti-immigration politics would spell disaster for France.

“Extremism can only bring unhappiness and division to France,’’ defeated conservative candidate Francois Fillon said. “As such, there is no other choice than to vote against the extreme right.’’

The selection of Le Pen and Macron presented voters with the starkest possible choice between two diametrically opposed visions of the EU’S future and France’s place in it. It set up a battle between Macron’s optimistic vision of a tolerant France, a united Europe with open borders against Le Pen’s darker, inward-looking platform that called for closed borders, tougher security, less immigration and dropping the shared euro currency to return to the French franc.

With Le Pen wanting France to leave the EU and Macron wanting even closer co-operation between the bloc’s 28 nations, Sunday’s outcome meant the May 7 runoff will have undertones of a referendum on France’s EU membership.

The absence in the runoff of candidates from either the mainstream left Socialists or the right-wing Republicans party _ the two main groups that have governed post-war France _ also marked a seismic shift in French politics. Macron, a 39-year-old investment banker, made the runoff on the back of a grassroots campaign without the support of a major political party.

With 50 per cent of the vote counted, the Interior Ministry said Sunday night that Le Pen had 24 per cent of the vote, Macron had 22 per cent, Fillon had 20 per cent and far-right Jean-luc Melenchon had 18 per cent.

Melenchon refused to cede defeat. In a defiant speech to supporters, he said he would continue to await the results from France’s cities. The early vote count includes primarily rural constituencies that lean to the right.

Le Pen, in a chest-thumping speech to cheering supporters Sunday night, declared that she embodies “the great alternative’’ for French voters. She portrayed her duel with Macron as a battle between “patriots’’ and “wild deregulation’’ _ warning of job losses overseas, mass migration straining resources at home and “the free circulation of terrorists.’’

“The time has come to free the French people,’’ she said at her election day headquarters in the northern French town of Henin-beaumont, adding that nothing short of “the survival of France’’ will be at stake in the presidential runoff.

Her supporters burst into a rendition of the French national anthem, chanted “We will win!’’ and waved French flags and blue flags with “Marine President’’ inscribed on them.

In Paris, protesters angry at Le Pen’s advance _ some from anarchist and anti-fascist groups _ scuffled with police. Officers fired tear gas to disperse the rowdy crowd.