French left votes, right fights scandal as presidential race heats up
paris — A new chapter opened in France’s closely contested presidential election campaign on Sunday as Socialists voted to choose their champion and conservatives fought to keep their scandal-hit campaign on track.
Polling opened at 0800GMT in a primary runoff that pits pro-business ex-prime minister Manuel Valls against hard-left lawmaker Benoit Hamon for the Socialist ticket. A result was expected by the end of Sunday.
Francois Fillon — chosen as conservative candidate last year by his party The Republicans but hurt last week by a newspaper claim that his wife was paid for fake work — was meanwhile due to hold a rally on the outskirts of Paris.
Hamon is favourite to beat Valls in the Socialist primary’s head-tohead vote, even though the outcome remains uncertain given that any voter can take part.
By midday, the high turnout Valls has been calling for looked likely, with over half a million people taking part by midday, according to the organisers, up from around 400,000 in last week’s first round.
Neither man has much chance of winning the presidential race itself, though, after five years of unpopular Socialist rule.
Until Fillon tripped up over his British wife Penelope’s pay, prompting the opening of an official inquiry into the matter, he was favourite to move into the Elysee presidential palace.
Opinion polls showed him beating far-right National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen in a run-off vote on May 7 with a comfortable two-thirds of the vote.
Popularity polls since have shown his rating slip slightly.
Whichever Socialist wins on Sunday, opinion polls show the party destined for a humiliating fifth place in the April 23 first round of the election itself, behind Fillon, Le Pen, centrist Emmanuel Macron, and the far left’s Jean-Luc Melenchon.
Nevertheless, Sunday’s outcome is important to the election, and for the future of the Socialist party, unpopular after five years of high unemployment under President Francois Hollande and split by a pro-business policy u-turn that angered its left-wingers. — Reuters