The heat is on as Le Pen’s aide calls Macron arrogant

PARIS: Round two of the bitter fight for the French presidency got under way within hours of first round results, with far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s top aide launching a stinging attack on her centrist opponent Emmanuel Macron.

“Emmanuel is not a patriot. He sold off national companies. He criticised French culture,” Florian Philippot, deputy leader of Le Pen’s National Front told BFM TV, saying she and Macron held completely different visions of France.

Philippot called the independent centrist and former investment banker “arrogant” and said that in the speech acclaiming his move into the May 7 second round “he was speaking as if he had won already”.

“That was disdainful towards the French people,” Phillipot said, adding that Macron’s victory celebrations at the upscale Rotonde restaurant amounted to “bling-bling biz”.

Though Macron, 39, is a comparative political novice who has never held elected office, opinion polls saw him easily winning the final clash against the 48-year-old Le Pen.

Interior ministry final figures in the highly-contested first round gave Macron 23.74% of the votes against Le Pen’s 21.53%.

A Harris survey saw Macron going on to win the run-off against her by 64% to 36%. An Ipsos-Sopra Steria poll gave a similar result.

Analysts say Le Pen’s best chance of hauling back Macron’s big lead in the polls is to paint him as a part of an elite aloof from ordinary French people and their problems.

Part of that strategy would be to remind voters of Macron’s former role as a deal-maker in investment banking and economy minister in the discredited government of outgoing Socialist President Francois Hollande. — Reuters