I won’t run for president, Juppe says
The former French prime minister rules himself out as beleaguered Fillon remains the conservatives’ presidential candidate
NICE // As the French presidential election veers from scandal to farce, the beleaguered centre- right candidate Francois Fillon is desperately fighting to stay in the race despite being enfeebled by imminent criminal charges and the mass defection of supporters.
Mr Fillon, previously the favourite to succeed the socialist Francois Hollande at the Elysee Palace, was buoyed by a large turnout of sympathisers at the Paris Trocadero, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, on Sunday.
But he remains under strong pressure to stand down after learning last week that he faces formal investigation over payments, amounting to hundreds of thousands of euros, to his British wife Penelope and two of their adult children for allegedly fictitious work.
Leaders of his party, Les Republicains, held an emergency meeting last night to discuss the crisis that threatens to divide the electorate and hand victory to either Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Front National party, or Emmanuel Macron, the centrist dark horse.
Mr Fillon insists no one has the power to force his withdrawal. He has apologised for “errors” but claims to be the victim of an attempted “political assassination”.
Underlining the sort of choices the French face when they vote on April 23 in the first round of the election, Ms Le Pen is also embroiled in legal problems.
She could be prosecuted on any of four investigations into her own allegedly fictitious employ- ment of staff, past election funding, personal tax declarations and the posting of images of ISIL violence on social media, which she defended as a response to unfair comparison between her party, which is against Islam and immigration, and the extremists. Mrs Fillon, who may also be prosecuted, broke her silence at the weekend to declare support for her husband as the “only candidate with the experience, vision and programme to direct France”.
Speaking to the Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, she said: “I have told him, and tell him each day, he should fight to the end. It’s for him to decide.”
Mrs Fillon denied any wrongdoing, insisting that the payments her husband made to her, one of their four sons and their daughter, all from public funds, were for work genuinely undertaken on his behalf.
The uncertainty surrounding the election deepened yesterday when Alain Juppe, the man seen by conservatives as the ideal replacement should Mr Fillon stand down, ruled himself out.
Mr Juppe, a former prime minister like Mr Fillon, acknowledged the chaos into which the election has descended.
“Never in France’s fifth republic [ established in 1958] has a presidential election taken place in such confusion,” he said in Bordeaux.
The left was weakened and divided after Mr Hollande’s failure as president, he said, while Ms Le Pen was also entangled in legal troubles and Mr Macron was handicapped by “political immaturity” and a poor programme.
“And as for us, what a mess,” Mr Juppe said in a reference to Les Republicains, citing the “obstinacy” of Mr Fillon and his strategy of presenting the legal procedures against him as a conspiracy.
Amid intense debate about the suitability of the candidates, their competing proposals for addressing France’s economic and social problems risk being overlooked. The reason hundreds of Mr Fillon’s natural allies have abandoned him is that he appears to have reneged on a promise to withdraw if charged. He admitted last week that this was the purpose of his summons before judges on March 15.
Many critics saw his Paris rally,
Never in France’s fifth republic has a presidential election taken place in such confusion Alain Juppe former French premier
attended by tens of thousands of people, as a challenge to the judicial system. Mr Fillon has a long record of condemning those who view the “law of the street” as superior to the rule of law.
He denies hypocrisy, saying the rally was in support of him, not an attack on the judges, and that his stance is justified by what he sees as the unfair timing of the legal process.
But recent opinion polls suggest he will be eliminated in the first round, whereas Mr Juppe would have led the field.
In a further twist to this tangled tale of modern French politics, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday urged Mr Fil- lon and Mr Juppe to discuss with him a “dignified and credible” solution. Francois Baroin, a former finance minister, emerged as the latest possible replacement for Mr Fillon.
It is hardly lost on commentators that Mr Fillon’s legal problems are not unprecedented.
Mr Juppe was given a suspended sentence in 2004 for his role in another bogus jobs scandal, although, as he noted yesterday, the court accepted this involved no personal gain. Mr Sarkozy is awaiting trial, accused of illegally financing his unsuccessful 2012 presidential campaign.