Le Pen on offensive

> Far-right candidate tries to close gap with Macron

PARIS: With a week to go before France’s presidential election runoff, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen stayed on the offensive against frontrunner Emmanuel Macron on Sunday, trying to close a 19point gap in the polls.

After a visit to an aluminium plant in the southern town of Gardanne, the 48-year-old Le Pen went on to lay a wreath at a World War II monument in the nearby port of Marseille.

Hours later, Macron, who if elected would become France’s youngest president at 39, paid his respects at Paris’s Holocaust memorial, where he was greeted by France’s grand rabbi, Haim Korsia.

Eurosceptic leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, who crashed out of the race in the first round, meanwhile, urged his supporters not to vote for Le Pen, saying that would be a “terrible error”.

“I say to anyone who is listening: do not make the terrible error of voting for the National Front because you would push the country towards a general conflagration and the ending to which no one can predict,” he said on the TF1 television channel.

In a video message last week, Le Pen urged the nearly 20% of voters who backed Melenchon in the April 23 first round to “block” Macron, saying his pro-business programme was “diametrically opposed” to leftist ideals.

Laurent Saint-Martin, a Macron campaign worker leafleting in a Paris district, said the campaign was stressing positive reasons for backing its candidate.

“For the second round the challenge is to convince.

“We’re not trying to build an anti-FN front, that doesn’t work anymore. We’re building a progressive, pragmatic front.”

A 53-year-old voter, who gave his name only as Fred, said he planned to vote Le Pen for the first time because of “massive immigration”.

“I’ve lived in Africa, I love Africa, but the dream of every African is to come to France. Le Pen may not do everything she says but on immigration maybe she will change things,” the film production company head said. – AFP