Macron’s popularity rating drops

French far-right National Front keeps euro-exit stance

PARIS, July 23, (Agencies): French President Emmanuel Macron’s popularity rating has slumped by 10 percentage points this month, according to an Ifop poll on Sunday — the biggest decline for a new president since 1995.

The poll, published in the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, said 54 percent of people in France were satisfied with Macron in July, compared with 64 percent in June.

It added the last time a newly elected president had lost ground in that way was Jacques Chirac in 1995. The Ifop poll echoed a similar finding in a recent BVA poll.

Macron has had a tough month, marked by a public row over military spending cuts with top armed forces chief General Pierre de Villiers that led to de Villiers’ resignation.

Macron also ending up overruling his own prime minister by vowing to press ahead with tax cuts in 2018, while plans to cut housing benefits have also come in for criticism.

Meanwhile, France’s far-right National Front (FN) said Saturday it would maintain its goal of seeing the nation out of the euro common currency, despite urging by some in the party to ditch the stance as a voteloser.

The decision came after a two-day, closed-door meeting at the group’s headquarters west of Paris, to learn the lessons of May’s presidential election that saw its candidate Marine Le Pen lose by double digits.

But while the policy position remains, a statement said it had been pushed back to the end of the fiveyear term of any future FN government, in what appeared to be a concession to critics.

Some inside the party — and many commentators outside — think this issue helped sink Le Pen’s campaign.

And according to some of those present at the meeting, several of the group’s leading members abstained in a vote on the final text.

Le Pen, campaigning on an anti-EU and anti-immigration platform, lost with 34 percent of the vote to centrist Emmanuel Macron’s 66 percent in the May 7 runoff.

In parliamentary elections just weeks later, the FN won a mere eight seats in the 577-member National Assembly, missing its target of 15, as Macron’s centrist party captured a comfortable majority.

As late as Friday, FN secretary general Nicolas Bay told FranceInfo radio he thought the party could reverse its stance on the question of an exit from the euro.

“I think we need to listen to what the French people said,” he told the broadcaster. “We did not convince people with this idea.”

But the party’s deputy leader Florian Philippot, a strong supporter of the euro withdrawal policy, had warned against abandoning it.

He insists the party needs to speak to French voters “on issues beyond the traditional subjects of the National Front, such as immigration and crime”.

Le Pen herself has said the FN will hold a “wide consultation” with party members, probably in September.

Disagrements

Among the biggest disagreements is the FN’s economic policy, and in particular its rejection of the euro, an idea which is unpopular with the majority of the electorate but appeals to the party’s core supporters.

“We have taken into account the electorate’s message on the euro, namely that it was something that worried them,” Jerome Riviere, part of Le Pen’s presidential campaign team, told Reuters on Saturday. Riviere said the FN’s main priorities were on migration and border controls, rather than the euro currency.

Deputy chief Florian Philippot threatened to quit if the FN’s policy on restoring the franc was dropped, to the annoyance of some senior colleagues, while Le Pen has left open the possibility of watering down the pledge.

Political analysts blamed the FN’s election defeat on its lack of allies, distrust among voters for some of its hardline policies and a TV debate performance by Le Pen that some party officials admit was damaging.

In another development, the tomb of Marshal Philippe Petain, who led France’s collaborationist Vichy regime under Nazi occupation, was vandalised on Saturday, the eve of the 66th anniversary of his death, police said.

Police and firefighters were called to the site of the tomb on Ile d’Yeu in western France at 4:00 am (0200 GMT) on reports of a trash bin fire at the Port-Joinville cemetery. The fire was quickly extinguished, but police then discovered that the cross on Petain’s tomb had been broken.

Some letters were also written on the tombstone but police were unsure of their significance.

In 2007, Petain’s tomb was also vandalised with the white cross broken and trash dumped on the site.

Petain, a French military leader hailed as a hero of World War I, was the head of the government that capitulated to the Nazis and subsequently collaborated with their occupation of France, including the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews to death camps.

“It happens from time to time that the tomb is targeted and some people throw things on top of it,” local official Sylvie Groc told AFP.

“We avoid disclosing it so people don’t get bad ideas,” she said, adding that now “we have to lock the cemetery at night”.

The incident comes the day before the anniversary of Petain’s death on July 23, 1951, at the age of 95.

While the Nazis occupied the north of France, Petain led so-called Vichy France in the centre and the south of the country, with its headquarters in the eponymous spa city.

Despite having autonomy from German policies, Petain passed legislation that saw Jews — around 150,000 of whom had fled to southern France believing it to be safer — subjected to severe discrimination similar to that in the Nazi-occupied north.

Under Petain, the Vichy regime put to death up to 15,000 people and helped deport nearly 80,000.

After the war Petain was convicted of treason and condemned to death but General Charles de Gaulle commuted his sentence to life in prison.

Simferopol, he told journalists that “I know Yalta has wonderful scenery and nice girls,” Russia’s RIA Novosti state news agency reported.

Kusturica last year received a state honour called the Order of Friendship from Russian President Vladimir Putin in a ceremony at the Kremlin, while Russia and Serbia have close cultural ties.

Earlier this month Kusturica praised Putin’s “gentle nature” in an interview with state-funded RT network, saying that the Kremlin strongman had made the country proud of its history and culture.

The director’s visit to Crimea defied a clampdown by Ukraine on arts figures who have visited the Black Sea peninsula since Moscow’s 2014 annexation.

Ukraine has strict rules on visiting Crimea that only allow visits with permission from Kiev and via certain entry points. Those who fly into Crimea by plane from Moscow as Kusturica did face a ban on entry to Ukraine. Ukraine’s security service has said it has issued travel bans on some 140 Russian arts figures over visits to Crimea or expressing support for Russia’s annexation of the peninsula.

A music festival in Crimea in August is set to feature German techno band Scooter — massively popular in the ex-Soviet Union in the 1990s — and Russian rock band Leningrad, according to its website. Kusturica told Russian news site Gazeta.ru this month that he is set to make a film based on themes from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels, which will be shot in China. (AFP)