French conservatives in crisis as candidate Fillon flounders
For France’s conservatives, this year’s presidential election should have been effortless.
Instead, the Republicans party — once all but certain to take back the Elysee Palace in 2017 — is in disarray over the corruption-tainted campaign of its candidate Francois Fillon. Riven by dissent as Fillon tenaciously clings to his bid, the conservatives are watching their presidential hopes sink by the day.
Far-right nationalists, meanwhile, are gearing up for what they hope is their Donald Trump moment, in which National Front leader Marine Le Pen proves the pollsters wrong and harnesses the anti-immigration, anti-establishment sentiment percolating around Europe to capture a presidential victory.
In this prediction-defying French presidential campaign, anything could still happen between now and April 23, when the voting begins.
One thing is clear: The conservatives are in trouble. And no one is eager to take Fillon’s place with less than seven weeks left to campaign.
Many conservatives had pinned their hopes on former Prime Minister Alain Juppe to step in and save their party’s chances — but on Monday he definitively rejected that poisoned chalice.
“It’s too late,” he told reporters, accusing Fillon, who beat him in the conservative primary, of leading the French right into a political “dead end.”
“What a waste,” Juppe said. “Last week I received many calls asking me to take over. They made me hesitate, I thought about it. Today, uniting everyone has become even more difficult . ... I confirm, once and for all, that I will not bid to be the French president.”
It’s a remarkable aboutface for him and his party.
A year ago, Juppe was considered a shoo-in for the 2017 presidential race. Socialist President Francois Hollande’s record-setting unpopularity all but guaranteed that France’s other main political force, the conservative Republicans, would take back power.
Then Fillon, promising tougher security and pro-business economic reforms, shot up and wrested the conservative primary from the more moderate Juppe in November.
That made Fillon the front-runner in polls — until January, when he was accused of arranging taxpayer-funded jobs for his wife and two of his children that they never performed. He insists the jobs were not fake, but Fillon now faces possible charges on March 15.
Top allies have fled his campaign and the situation has created a deep chasm among French right-wingers.
Some party leaders tightened ranks around Fillon at an urgent committee meeting Monday, apparently giving up on finding an alternative hopeful.
Bernard Accoyer, the party’s secretary general, said The Republicans are behind their candidate “with a new impulse” and that they “are ready again to go into battle and have relaunched the campaign.” It may however be too late.
And now France’s entire two-party system may be upended.
Current polls suggest that for the first time in modern French history, neither the Socialists nor the Republicans may make it past the first-round vote on April 23. The top two vote-getters there then advance to the May 7 presidential runoff.
Instead, the far-right Le Pen and the centrist independent candidate Emmanuel Macron are favored to lead the first round of voting, and Macron is favored to win the presidency.