Juppe widens lead over ‘rival’ Sarkozy
MEPs lift Jean-Marie immunity
PARIS, Oct 25, (Agencies): Former prime minister Alain Juppe has widened his lead over rival Nicolas Sarkozy to win the center-right’s nomination for France’s 2017 presidential elections, an opinion poll showed on Tuesday.
Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, initially narrowed the gap with Juppe when he launched his campaign in August on a law-and-order platform. But his hardline strategy seems to be backfiring as the primaries vote nears.
Juppe is seen winning 41 percent of the votes in the first round on Nov. 20, up four points from last month, while Sarkozy loses three points to 30 percent, the poll carried out by Ipsos pollsters and the Cevipof research institute showed.
None of the five other, lesser known candidates would attract much votes, meaning Sarkozy and Juppe are all but certain to face each other in the two-person run-off on Nov. 27.
The poll forecasts that Juppe, who was prime minister from 1995 to 1997 and held the posts of foreign minister and defence minister after that, will win that run-off easily with 60 percent of the votes, up 4 points from last month’s survey.
The winner of the primaries has a good chance of prevailing in the presidential election in May, considering Socialist President Francois Hollande’s deep unpopularity and the divisions amid left-wing candidates.
Meanwhile, French presidential hopeful Jean-Francois Cope had a Marie Antoinette moment on Monday, when he said he had “no idea” of the cost of pain au chocolat, a French pastry favourite.
“I have no idea but ... I think it must be around 10 or 15 centimes,” Cope said when asked by a viewer of French TV channel Europe 1 if he knew the price of the chocolatefilled pastry, which sell for around 10 times his estimate.
Cope’s comments recall a piece of 18th century French legend: when informed that the peasants had no bread to eat, the country’s last queen, Marie Antoinette, unaware of a raging famine, was said to have uttered the immortal words, “let them eat cake.”
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STRASBOURG, France: EU lawmakers on Tuesday lifted the parliamentary immunity of former French far-right leader JeanMarie Le Pen, a move sought by French prosecutors who want to try him for allegedly inciting race hate.
MEPs endorsed the decision by a show of hands after reviewing a 2014 clip the former National Front leader posted on the party website.
In it, Le Pen vowed to put his critics in their place — including French singer Patrick Bruel, who is Jewish — and used a pun suggesting Nazi gas chambers.
The European Parliament’s legal affairs committee said earlier the 88-year-old’s remarks were not in line with his work as an MEP.
The committee also stressed parliamentary immunity “does not allow for slandering, libelling, inciting hatred or pronouncing statements attacking a person’s honour.”
The 2014 video was also condemned by Le Pen’s daughter Marine, who took over the FN’s leadership in 2011, as a “political error.”
It was the first time she had criticised her father in public. The senior Le Pen has had multiple convictions for inciting racial hatred and denying crimes against humanity.
On Monday, the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, said he had received a request to also end Marine Le Pen’s immunity, and this had been handed to the legal affairs committee.
A source at the parliament, in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, said Schulz’s request is linked to an investigation opened after Marine Le Pen tweeted graphic images in December of Islamic State atrocities, including the beheading of US reporter James Foley.
She said she was responding to a journalist whom she had accused of having compared her party to the Islamic State group.