Le Pen aides brush off plagiarism accusations, Macron camp frets
RUN-OFF: Macron remains the frontrunner with polls predicting a 19-point lead
PARIS: French presidential far-right candidate Marine Le Pen fought off accusations of plagiarism on Tuesday as supporters of her rival Emmanuel Macron warned that a high abstention rate could hurt his chances of victory.
It emerged that Le Pen had copied parts of a fiery speech she made on Monday from one made about two weeks earlier by one-time conservative candidate Francois Fillon, the former frontrunner who was eliminated in the first round of the election.
In an address on April 15, Fillon made specific mention of the geography of France’s borders, paid tribute to the French language and spoke of a third “French way” for the 21st century.
Analysis by the Ridicule TV YouTube channel showed Le Pen repeated these passages almost verbatim from Fillon’s speech.
Florian Philippot, the vice president of Le Pen’s National Front (FN) party, said it was “not plagiarism”, but “a nod to a short passage in a speech about France”.
Le Pen’s spokesman David Rachline said the copied passages in the speech were “appreciated by Fillon’s voters”.
Just days ahead of Sunday’s runoff, 39-year-old Macron remains the frontrunner in the race with polls predicting a 19-point lead, putting him on track to become France’s youngest president.
Amid concerns in his camp that a high abstention rate could help Le Pen’s chances, company bosses, celebrities and scientific researchers called in newspaper editorials for people to vote for Macron, a former investment banker who styles himself as “neither of the left nor the right”.
Macron’s economically liberal approach worries many voters on the left. While they will not back Le Pen, many say they will stay at home rather than vote for him.
Opinion polls say abstention could be as high as 30 per cent, higher than in recent presidential elections, as the “Neither-nor” camp gains strength. Cedric Villani, mathematician and a high-profile commentator wrote in the left-wing Liberation newspaper on Tuesday that abstaining “is the equivalent of giving half of one’s vote to Marine Le Pen in the most important election that France has had for several decades”.
Le Pen and Macron will face off on Wednesday in a what promises to be a fiery TV debate when the farright candidate is likely to sharpen her attacks on a candidate she says embodies “the world of finance, of arrogance, of money as king”.