Angry Fillon vows revenge on Hollande for ‘dirty tricks’
FRANÇOIS FILLON has vowed revenge on President François Hollande for allegedly masterminding a dirty tricks campaign against him that nearly derailed the conservative candidate’s bid for the Elysée.
The renewed assault on the Socialist leader came as the far-Left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, closed in on Mr Fillon, with opinion polls showing the firebrand politician was on the way to ousting his conservative rival from third place in the French presidential race.
Mr Fillon took aim at both the maverick centrist Emmanuel Macron, the frontrunner for the first round of the vote, and the far-Right leader Marine Le Pen, who is in second place in the polls, in an interview with France Inter radio yesterday.
But the self-declared Thatcherite kept his most savage attacks for those he says conspired, on the orders of Mr Hollande, to have prosecutors charge him with embezzlement of public funds.
He said he now knew exactly who leaked documents about his wife and children’s alleged fake jobs as his parliamentary aides and he plans to sue them.
The 63-year-old Les Républicains candidate gave no names but said he had been informed that certain officials personally delivered the documents to the Canard Enchainé, the investigative weekly that broke the story and put an end to his previous lead position in the election race.
“This affair was manufactured, and I will prove it. I have the dates, the days, the people who revealed the documents,” said Mr Fillon, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
“When the moment comes, I will un- mask them. It’s true there have been days when I’ve slept badly. But I assure you that those who created this affair won’t sleep well either,” he said.
Asked if he believed it was the president who was behind the whole affair, Mr Fillon replied: “Yes, of course.”
He did not however specifically say he planned to sue the president, whom he has previously accused of plotting to prevent him from winning the election, which takes place in two rounds in late April and early May.
Stephane Le Foll, the government spokesman, retorted that Mr Fillon’s comments were “defamatory” and that the justice system was independent and did not act on the president’s orders.
Mr Fillon’s accusations came as the latest opinion polls confirmed a surge of support for Mr Mélenchon after his strong showing in an often heated television debate this week attended by all 11 candidates.
Three different surveys all showed the far-Left candidate was just a point or two behind Mr Fillon and would soon overtake him if support continued to grow.
Mr Mélenchon, 65, was seen by pollsters as the most convincing performer in the four-hour debate on Tuesday.
He clashed with Ms Le Pen over her focus on the tensions created by religion in politics, although his policies advocating greater worker protection, and his hostility to the European Union in its current form, are similar to hers.
He would also pull France out of Nato and called for the debt of troubled eurozone states to be written off to allow massive new investment to spur growth.
The opinion polls either put Mr Macron narrowly ahead of Ms Le Pen or have them neck and neck for the first round on April 23.
Poll predictions for the second and final round on May 7 put Mr Macron well ahead of Ms Le Pen, and also said that Mr Fillon would easily beat her if he managed to make it through to the runoff. But experts warn that this is the most unpredictable French election in decades.