Mainstream parties unite against Le Pen
French presidential candidate condemns the coalition, calls it ‘old and completely rotten’
PARIS— A day after mainstream parties were dealt a heavy defeat in the French presidential election, farright leader Marine Le Pen, one of the two candidates to advance to a runoff, condemned the parties’ calls to unite against her and support her rival, independent centrist Emmanuel Macron.
Le Pen’s statement on Monday denouncing “the old and completely rotten Republican Front” — the coalition of mainstream parties allied against her — sums up her challenge in the May 7 runoff. So far, not a single rival party has called for its voters to support Le Pen. And she has no plausible major reservoir of votes to add to the 21.3 per cent she received in the first round of voting, though she is expected to gain some voters from defeated centre-right candidate François Fillon.
Perhaps in an effort to broaden her appeal to voters from outside the farright National Front’s traditional constituencies, Le Pen announced on Twitter Monday that she was temporarily stepping down as the party’s leader so she could run as a candidate for “all the French.”
“Tonight, I am not the president of the National Front, I am the presidential candidate, the one who wants to gather all the French around a project of hope, of prosperity, of security,” she said.
Most of Le Pen’s rivals have gathered around the effort to defeat her. Only one major candidate has resisted calls to unite against her: JeanLuc Mélenchon, the firebrand hardleft candidate who came in fourth and who has pointedly refused to support Macron, saying instead that he would seek the opinion of his supporters through his website. Similarly, traditionalist Roman Catholic organizations that backed Fillon re- fused to endorse Macron.
Some of Le Pen’s advisers said they were hoping to lure some of the supporters of the defeated Mélenchon, whose populist program bore similarities to that of Le Pen: hostility to the European Union, NATO and the forces of globalization; and a forgiving attitude toward Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.
Many of Mélenchon’s supporters may have little fondness for Le Pen, but in interviews they expressed equal disdain for the pro-free market Macron. “For me, Le Pen, Macron, it’s the same,” said Olivia Scemama, a musician from Paris who said she voted for Mélenchon on Sunday. “With Macron, it’s the extremism of banks, of finance.”
The election results published Monday suggested another hurdle for Le Pen to overcome: a sharp urban-rural divide in the vote, with voters in France’s major cities heavily favouring her rivals.
The geography and sociology of her support was similar to Donald Trump’s support in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. She won more départements — between a county and a state in French political geography — than Macron, and she won the working-class vote. But she did poorly in what French sociologists call “Winner’s France” — urban, employed, well-educated and pro-European.
On Monday, Le Pen continued to emphasize the anti-immigrant and anti-globalization views that propelled her into the second round, and she denounced the efforts of the mainstream parties to keep her out of the presidency.
“The old and completely rotten Republican Front, which no one wants, and which the French have pushed away with exceptional violence, is trying to coalesce around Mr. Macron,” Le Pen said.
Polls released Monday showed that about 60 per cent of voters supported Macron, compared with less than 40 per cent for Le Pen.
A live televised debate between the candidates is set for May 3.