Key storylines in France’s PRESIDENTIAL RUNOFF
PARIS: On Sunday, French voters proved that the pollsters do get it right sometimes. With ballots still being counted, independent centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen, the pair that led in pre-election polls, were projected to face each other in a head-to-head runoff in two weeks.
Macron is the clear favorite in the second round, but Le Pen, who has been preparing for this moment for years, should not be written off. Here’s a quick primer on what happened and what’s to come:
The outsiders won. In a country whose politics have been long dominated by establishment center-left and centerright parties, neither candidate from those two camps made it to the second round. That’s the first time this has happened in the history of the Fifth Republic. The next leader of the country will either be a 39-year-old former banker who has never been elected to high office or the scion of a political movement still intimately tied to a history of neo-fascism, racial bigotry and Holocaust apologia. The failure of the centerleft — the current president, Socialist François Hollande, was so unpopular that he didn’t run for reelection, and his replacement, Benoît Hamon, came in fifth — is part of a wider European trend.
Frustrated with the status quo, angry about immigration and skeptical of the European Union, the center-left’s traditional working-class base has drifted to populist parties across the continent. Hamon was upstaged by the far-left’s Jean-luc Mélenchon, who galvanized voters with strident attacks on prevailing capitalist orthodoxy.
The center-right candidate, Francois Fillon, was once the front-runner, but his campaign foundered amid allegations of graft and nepotism that may yet see him go to prison. Fillon and other defeated candidates urged their supporters to vote for Macron and against the far-right and Le Pen, whom Hamon called an “enemy of the Republic.” But right-wing voters could turn toward Le Pen, whose rhetoric on Islam, immigration and the European Union may appeal more than Macron’s optimistic liberalism, and many disgruntled Mélenchon supporters may sit out the runoff altogether (more on that later).
The vote is yet another sign that the West’s mainstream parties will need to redefine themselves or face electoral disaster.
“The rift between the global market’s winners and losers has replaced the old right-left split. This social and political divide coincides with a visible fault line between global centers plugged into the world economy and deprived outlying areas,” wrote French journalist Christophe Guilluy.
“In 1958 — when de Gaulle established the Fifth Republic, the semi-presidential system that has governed this country ever since — what he promised his countrymen most of all was political stability,” wrote my colleague Jake Mcauley. “But in 2017, that stability seems to have all but vanished. Regardless of which candidate emerges triumphant from the two rounds of voting to come, significant structural change could soon arrive.” For Le Pen, the real battle now begins. Le Pen has spent years burnishing the National Front’s image, trying to eclipse both the legacy and the taint of her father, Jean-marie Le Pen. She built up a populist base of support while attacking what she sees as the twin enemies of France: Islam and globalization. LONDON: Britain’s elite Special Air Service (SAS) unit of the Army is doubling its antiterror forces to tackle the growing terror threat to the country.
The unit will increase in size to 80 troops, ‘The Sunday Times’ quoted a source close to the elite regiment as saying.
The aim is to ensure security services have the manpower and skill to tackle co-ordinated attacks3 by gunmen and suicide bombers like those that left 130 dead in Paris in November 2015.
Police in London have an elite force of about 130 antiterrorism officers trained by the SAS to fire weapons in “close quarters combat” and to drop from helicopters by rope.
While they are good, the source said, “they are not trained soldiers. They are not trained in close-quarters combat to the level that the SAS are”.
The UK’S Ministry of Defence declined to comment on security operations.
Meanwhile, the security services have identified 350 people who have returned to Britain from Syria and pose a potential terrorist threat, Whitehall sources have told The Times.
The disclosure of a precise figure exposes the scale of the challenge facing counterterrorism agencies. Keeping one person under round-the-clock surveillance requires between 24 and 30 police or intelligence officers.all those returning from Syria have been assessed. While some are disillusioned with extremism and pose no danger, a large number have been trained in the use of firearms and explosives and are indoctrinated with the ideology of Islamic State. LONDON: Britain will deploy attack dogs which may respond only to particular acts or commands at the gates of its Parliament as part of the latest anti-terror security drive in the country. The dogs will be stationed with police handlers at the weakest point, the gates through which Khalid Masood tried to gain entry into the Palace of Westminster during the March 22 attack in which four people, including an unarmed policeman guarding Parliament, were killed.
Sir Paul Beresford, former chairman of the House of Commons administration committee, said the dogs were being “seriously considered” in a review of perimeter security. Other steps, including stronger vehicle barriers, are likely to form part of the review, which was due to report last week but has now been delayed by the general election next month, ‘The Sunday Times’ reports.
“The gates have to be open when MPS are coming into vote, but we recognise it is a chink in the armour,” Beresford was quoted as saying by the paper.”if some idiot who is not a terrorist runs in, and there are a few of those out there, the dog will drop them and they won’t be shot,” he said.
A second inquiry is examining security inside the building in central London. Dogs, typically Alsatians, are already used on gate duties at British military bases during times of threat, although they are a rare sight outside the world’s democratic parliaments. The dogs can be trained to respond only to particular acts or commands.
A spokesperson for the Commons authorities declined to comment on the two reviews’ contents before publication, but said that members’ views were being considered in detail.