French presidential race centres on Valls after Hollande bow-out

PARIS: The focus of France’s presidential election swung on to Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Friday as the possible standard bearer of the ruling Socialists following Francois Hollande’s shock announcement that he would not seek a second term.

A snap opinion poll, conducted on Thursday night after Hollande stunned France with his announcement, showed that Socialist voters and French voters as a whole wanted to see Valls win the party ticket to run for president next spring.

Hollande’s dramatic withdrawal from the presidential race threw the search for a new leader of the Left wide open.

But his move does not change the broad expectations that any Socialist candidate — Valls included — will be eliminated in a first round of voting next April, and that the president will be chosen via in a May 7 runoff vote between the centre-right candidate Francois Fillon and far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

Valls, 54, a former interior minister who is regarded as France’s “top cop” because of his tough stance on law and order, broadly represents the centrist economic leadings that prompted many left-wing voters to turn their back on Hollande. Many traditional left-wingers have railed against what they see as his pro-business stand.

All this means he will face an uphill battle if he enters the running, both in bidding for the Socialist ticket in January, and in the presidential contest itself, where he would be boxed in on the left by people not even taking part in the Socialist primaries; veteran Jean-Luc Melenchon to his left, and centrist former economy minister Emmanuel Macron to his right.

— AFP A man reads the French regional daily newspaper ‘La Montagne’ bearing on its front page a portrait of French President Francois Hollande and a headline reading ‘He renounces’ in front of the train station in Tulle.