Le Pen receives a boost from an unlikely source
PARIS: Far-right leader Marine Le Pen faces an uphill battle in France’s presidential runoff, less than two weeks away. But she saw daylight through a small window on Tuesday, and from an unlikely source: her defeated counterpart on the far left.
Alone among all of France’s major political personalities, Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of his own “France Unsubjugated” movement, who finished a strong fourth in Sunday’s voting, has refused to endorse Ms Le Pen’s opponent, former economy minister Emmanuel Macron.
Mr Melenchon’s critics say his obstinacy is petulant, wounded pride that can only help Ms Le Pen’s National Front. But it also speaks to the passions that Mr Macron, a seemingly mild-mannered centrist, provokes in large parts of the French electorate, far left and far right, who share a view of the 39-year-old former investment banker as a fire-breathing incarnation of evil market culture.
As populism and anger over the impacts of globalisation energise much of the electorate, Mr Melenchon’s stand has added a new element of uncertainty into the final round of voting on May 7.
It has also set off a dynamic in the French race much like when Hillary Clinton defeated Bernie Sanders in the US Democratic presidential primaries last year — leaving his supporters, still in the thrall of populism, up for grabs as party allegiances broke down.
Mr Melenchon’s 19.6% of the vote on Sunday is now a rich booty — triple the score of the mainstream Socialist Party, whose collapse has elevated Mr Melenchon to be de facto leader of the French left. He even won in big cities like Marseille and Lille. But it is not clear where that vote will now go, not least because far-left populism and far-right populism may have more in common than the seemingly vast gulf between them on the political spectrum would suggest.
Mr Melenchon, 65, a former Trotskyite, ran a campaign denouncing banks, globalisation and the European Union — just like Ms Le Pen. A grizzled orator with a penchant for Latin American dictators, he has the same forgiving attitude she does toward
the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
Both were competing for working-class voters suspicious of the global financial elite. Mr Macron had already “ruined the lives of thousands of people” with his promarket policies, Mr Melenchon said during the campaign.
And like Ms Le Pen, Mr Melenchon regularly attacked the news media during the campaign. On election night, after his defeat, he tore into what he called “mediacrats” and “oligarchs”. They were “rejoicing” over “two candidates who approve and want to maintain the current institutions”
of government, the longtime fan of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez said.
The shared lines of attack gave the candidates at the political extremes their best showings ever, if from opposite ends of the spectrum. Mr Melenchon almost doubled his 2012 result, refused to concede for hours and then attacked both finalists, refusing to distinguish between them.
In that, he is alone. Across the board, politicians and other former candidates have urgently counselled their supporters to vote for Mr Macron to block Ms Le Pen’s path to the Elysee Palace.
The French call this the “Republican Front”, and it has proved effective at preventing the National Front — perceived by many in France as a threat to democracy — from taking power before.
Mr Melenchon is having none of it. Instead, his party has announced an internet “consultation” of his followers, with three choices offered for the May 7 vote: a blank ballot, a vote for Mr Macron or an abstention. A vote for Ms Le Pen is not one of the choices, and Mr Melenchon’s aides insist that is the last thing they want.
On Tuesday, a site linked to Mr Melenchon’s party bristled with debate, with one poster saying Mr Macron and Ms Le Pen represented “the failure of the system” and others agonising over whether to abstain or vote blank.
Critics of Mr Melenchon — who have become numerous in the Socialist Party and in Macron’s camp — say a blank ballot or abstention can only help Ms Le Pen.
“It’s his pride. It’s led him to make an extremely serious mistake,” a leading Socialist MP, Malek Boutih, said on Tuesday. “He’s given them a huge boost,” he said of the National Front.