Paris attack may aid far-right candidate
2 hopefuls in race to succeed France’s Hollande promise to fight extremism
A terror attack three days before France’s presidential election left voters on edge, a mood that could boost far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who wants to crack down on immigration.
“I think it will have a subliminal psychological impact on some people,” said Alexis Madelenat, a tech senior executive in Paris.
Le Pen and Republican candidate François Fillon, both strong anti-terrorism candidates, “will benefit from this,” said Madelenat, 42, who favors independent candidate Emmanuel Macron, a centrist who narrowly led Le Pen and Fillon in recent polls.
The top two vote-getters Sunday will compete in a May 7 runoff to replace Socialist President François Hollande, who is not running. His approval rating is low because of the high unemployment rate and the government’s inability to thwart terror attacks over the past 18 months.
Thursday, a French national identified by news outlets as Karim Cheurfi, 39, fatally shot one police officer and wounded two others and a bystander on the famed Champs-Elysees in central Paris before he was killed by police. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.
Cheurfi had been detained this year for threatening a police officer but was released for lack of evidence, the French newspaper
Le Monde reported. As news of Thursday’s attack spread, the presidential candidates suspended their campaigns, and the government said it would heighten security Sunday.
“Nothing must hamper this (vote),” Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Friday after a meeting to examine the government’s already-heightened security plans, which include almost 60,000 police and soldiers.
“Barbarity and cowardice struck Paris last night,” he said. “We must not succumb to fear.”
Yet fear — and demands for a solution to end the attacks — may decide the election’s outcome.
President Trump tweeted Friday, “Another terrorist attack in Paris. The people of France will not take much more of this. Will have a big effect on presidential election!”
Le Pen, leader of the National Front, may be the biggest benefi- ciary because she has called for restrictions on Muslim immigra- tion and expulsion of those sus- pected of radical Islamist views.
“Enough of being lax, time to stop being naive,” she said on French radio RFI Friday. She as- sailed “radical Islam,” calling it “a monstrous, totalitarian ideology that has declared war on our na- tion, on reason, on civilization.”
Le Pen wants to pull France out of the European Union and close the borders to new immi- grants.
Fillon, a former prime minister who had been the front-runner before a scandal involving alleged phantom government jobs for his family, said he would continue a state of emergency instituted in 2015 and crack down on extrem- ism. “The fight for the French people’s freedom and security will be mine,” he said.
Macron said he is the candi- date to lead France at this anx- ious time. “The terrorists’ will is to destabilize the country,” he said. “In such circumstances, the role of the president of the repub- lic as the army chief and guardian of our institutions is to protect the French. I am ready.”