Underdogs span ideological spectrum
EU parliament could summon Le Pen before run off
PARIS, April 15, (Agencies): One wants to ban PokemanGo, another lays claim to knowing France the best of all 11 candidates for president after crisscrossing the country on foot for nine months.
But with the main candidates hogging the limelight in a rollercoaster race full of upsets and scandals, the underdogs are struggling for the voter’s ear.
Thanks to France’s strict electoral rules on equal time, the candidates who are scoring in the low single digits have been enjoying a somewhat higher profile in the final two weeks before voters cast their first ballots on April 23.
Trotskyist Nathalie Arthaud, who says she has no interest in actually becoming president, seizes every chance at the microphone to attack the “power of money” with gusto.
“If I came to power — if my ideas came to power — that would mean there’s been a societal upheaval, it would mean millions of women and men have decided to fight and to take their destiny into their own hands,” Arthaud, 47, said Thursday on TF1 television.
The standard-bearer of the Lutte Ouvriere (Workers’ Struggle), who won 0.56 percent in the 2012 election, wants to ban layoffs, raise wages and give workers control over companies.
Arthaud, a schoolteacher, has a soulmate in Philippe Poutou, the only other candidate with a “normal” job — in his case as a mechanic at a Ford factory where he is also a union leader.
In an April 4 debate among all 11 candidates, Poutou pleaded for the “millions who suffer in this society and are sick to death of this capitalist steamroller that destroys everything in its path”.
The 50-year-old head of the New Anti-Capitalist Party also took on conservative candidate Francois Fillon and far-right contender Marine Le Pen, both dogged by scandal.
“When we’re called in by the police, there’s no worker’s immunity!” he said in a dig at Le Pen, who may see her immunity lifted at the European Parliament over an expenses investigation.
Also running “against the political elite that has made a pact with the empire of money” is 75-year-old Jacques Cheminade, even though he attended the training ground for France’s elite, the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA).
Running for a third time after winning 0.25 percent of the vote in 2012, the retired civil servant who is the oldest candidate in the race has opted for a more
down-to-earth approach after being written off as an oddball five years ago for proposing the colonisation of Mars.
One of his pledges this time around is to ban Pokemon Go, saying the virtual treasure hunt is an “expression of the mental state of our society that is both ridiculous and appalling”.
Unlike most of his rivals, one-time shepherd Jean Lassalle is brimming with confidence that he will become France’s next president in May, despite his 1.5 percent standing in the latest Ipsos poll.
Critics say “I am incapable of doing anything besides keeping sheep,” Lassalle, an MP since 2002, told France Info radio in his thick southwestern twang.
But “I am the candidate who knows France the best in all its contours,” said the 61-year-old who covered more than 5,000 kms (3,000 miles) during his cross-country trek in 2013. He also
staged a 39-day hunger strike in 2006 over a threat to jobs in his constituency nestled in a valley of the Pyrenees.
Meanwhile, European Union lawmakers could summon French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen to discuss the lifting of her immunity over the alleged misuse of European Union money, before the second round of the French election, an influential legislator said on Saturday.
French judges have asked the European parliament to lift the immunity of the National Front leader, who is a member of the EU legislature, to permit further investigations over alleged misuse of funds to pay for party assistants.
“The legal affairs committee has agreed that Le Pen will be summoned for a hearing on the first possible date in May,” Laura Ferrara, the deputy chair of the committee, told Reuters.