Far-left outsider Melenchon crashes French election frontrunners’ party
>> Under a cloudless blue sky at an outdoor waterfront rally of 30,000 people in Marseille last Sunday, Jean-Luc Melenchon showed why his rise in French polls is spooking markets.
Speaking without a teleprompter or notes and using his trademark mix of humour and anger, the communist-backed far-left candidate of the France Unbowed party regaled the gathering with the evils of “extreme markets that are transforming suffering, misery and abandonment into gold and money”. He alluded to France as a country “with huge wealth that is badly distributed”, denounced the US air strikes in Syria and called for France to leave Nato.
“A new enthusiasm is now stirring our fervour,” the firebrand orator, famed for his lyrical discourse, told the enthralled crowd. They cheered and egged him on, screaming “Resistance” as he sprinkled his speech with references to ancient Greece, the Renaissance and revolution.
Speeches like those have catapulted the 65-year-old fan of former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro closer than he’s ever been to the French presidency. Polls show that Mr Melenchon is among four candidates now within striking distance of the second round of the French election, with a chance to gain enough votes on April 23 to make the runoff. With his plan to spend his way out of France’s economic woes, he is roiling markets.
The premium that France pays over Germany to borrow for 10 years rose to 75 basis points on Wednesday from less than 60 points in late March. Melenchon’s surge in popularity is bad news for French bonds, says ABN Amro analysts.
A Kantar Sofres poll last weekend had Mr Melenchon in third place with 18%, a point ahead of one-time frontrunner Francois Fillon. The poll showed nationalist Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron tied at 24% ahead of the first round of voting, with Mr Macron easily winning the May 7 runoff. Other polls put Mr Melenchon level or just behind Mr Fillon, but even that’s a major rise in the past few weeks.
If Melenchon and Le Pen make the runoff, “France could face a binary choice between unreconstructed communism and unrestrained fascism”, said Bill Blain, a strategist at brokerage Mint Partners in London.
Mr Melenchon’s steady rise has turned France’s already topsy-turvy election campaign into one of the most unpredictable contests in recent history. The far-left candidate has a loyal, passionate following not unlike that of the anti-immigration, antieuro Le Pen. Although still remote, the possibility of a face-off between the two is no longer dismissed as impossible.
“The impressive breakthrough of JeanLuc Melenchon has totally reshuffled the cards of this election,” said Gael Sliman, head of pollster Odoxa. “With two weeks to go, we have four candidates who can still win, which is unheard of.”
French President Francois Hollande fears a Le Pen-Melenchon contest in the decisive round, Le Monde reported on Wednesday.
As Mr Melenchon makes his second bid for the presidency, his followers are attracted by his uncompromising positions against globalism and Western militarism.
“He has the right ideas for the country,” said Tachefine Hocime, a 46-year-old maintenance worker and part-time musician, at a Melenchon rally in Le Havre.
The candidate, who has been vocal against the European Union’s austerity push, says his platform calls for a €100 billion stimulus programme and the renegotiation of European treaties to give France more economic control, with several conditions attached to staying in the euro.
He would make it harder for companies to fire, limit executive pay and pull out of free-trade deals. He wants to raise France’s minimum wage by 15% and lower the retirement age for some to 60 years with full pension. He would also seek to renationalise Electricite de France SA and Engie SA, and stop the construction of new nuclear plants.
“A Melenchon presidency would be unlikely to be followed by a parliamentary majority for the candidate, making it very difficult for the latter to implement his programme,” said a note by Credit Suisse analysts.
That has not halted the rise in his popularity, which took off after a March 20 debate between the top five candidates, with Mr Melenchon at the time firmly in fifth place. He far outshone Socialist Party nominee Benoit Hamon and post-debate polls credited him with the best performance after Mr Macron. He was again voted the most convincing of all the 11 candidates present at the next debate on April 4.
Those performances, where Mr Melenchon mixed quips with angry denunciations of France’s economic situation, came on top of the successful use of social media. Not unlike Senator Bernie Sanders during the US campaign, Mr Melenchon, the oldest of the main candidates, has the biggest presence on the internet and is popular with young voters.
It has been a long, hard journey to this point for the son of a post office worker and a teacher, both descendants of Spaniards and Italians who emigrated to French Algeria at the turn of the century. Mr Melenchon was born in Tangier, now Morocco, when it was an international zone.
He moved to France at the age of 11, studied philosophy, did various jobs including as a journalist and proofreader and got involved in Trotskyist politics. He joined the Socialist Party in 1976 at the age of 25 and has been elected to various regional, national and European legislative positions.
A sign of Mr Melenchon’s success is that candidates who once ignored him have taken to attacking him. Mr Fillon said at a rally in Paris that Mr Melenchon’s spending policies would turn France into Greece.
“Melenchon dreams of being the captain of the Potemkin, but he’ll end up selling the scraps of the Titanic,” Mr Fillon said, referring to the Tsarist warship taken over by a communist-led mutiny.