Violent protests grip France before vote
PARIS— With just six days until a French presidential runoff that could define Europe’s future, farright leader Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron held highstakes rallies Monday that overlapped with May Day marches and underscored the fact that jobs are voters’ No. 1 concern.
France votes for a new president on Sunday, a ballot being watched closely by financial markets and France’s neighbours as a test of the global populist wave.
While Le Pen got an endorsement from her father on Monday, Macron held an emotional meeting with a Moroccan man whose father died years ago when he was thrown off a Paris bridge by far-right skinheads. One May Day march in Paris was disrupted Monday as scores of hooded young people threw firebombs at riot police in full gear, who respond- ed with tear gas and truncheons. One police officer was seen spraying a troublemaker in the face.
Two police officers were reported injured, according to French television.
The violent protesters were not carrying union paraphernalia or anything linked to the French electoral campaign, appearing to be from fringe groups that have targeted antigovernment protests in the past.
Workers in the march aimed to block Le Pen from getting into power, but disagreed on the method. Some urged French workers to vote for Macron, but others refused to make that call, including far-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who was eliminated in the first-round vote on April 23.
Wanted or not, Le Pen was praised by her 88-year-old father Jean-Marie, the co-founder of her National Front party whom she expelled in 2015 after he reiterated anti-Semitic comments.
In a speech, Jean-Marie Le Pen urged French voters to back his daughter in Sunday’s runoff. He denounced Macron as a “masked Socialist” backed by the highly unpopular Socialist President François Hollande.