The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Violent protests over Le Pen vote success
Anger erupts as far-right populist Marine Le Pen advances to the presidential run-off vote
Centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron and far-right populist Marine Le Pen have advanced to the French presidential run-off vote, overhauling the country’s political system and setting up a showdown over its participation in the European Union.
In Paris, protesters angry that Ms Le Pen has advanced into the final vote scuffled with police.
Crowds of young people, some from anarchist and “anti-fascist” groups, gathered on the Place de la Bastille in eastern Paris as results were coming in from the first round vote.
Police fired tear gas to disperse an increasingly rowdy crowd and riot police surrounded the area.
Protesters staged demos at several of Ms Le Pen’s campaign events, angry at her anti-immigration policies and her party.
French politicians on the left and right immediately urged voters to block Ms Le Pen’s path to power in the May 7 vote, saying her virulently nationalist anti-EU and anti-immigration politics would spell disaster for France.
The selection of Ms Le Pen and Mr Macron presents voters with the starkest possible choice between two diametrically opposed visions of the EU’s future and France’s place in it.
It sets up a battle between Mr Macron’s optimistic vision of a tolerant France with open borders against Ms Le Pen’s darker, inward-looking platform calling for closed borders, tougher security, less immigration and dropping the shared euro currency to return to the franc.
With Ms Le Pen wanting France to leave the EU, and Mr Macron proposing even closer co-operation between the bloc’s 28 nations, the outcome of the first round of voting yesterday after a wildly unpredictable and tense campaign means the run-off will have undertones of a referendum on France’s EU membership.
The absence in the final vote of candidates from either the mainstream left Socialists or the right-wing Republicans party – the two main groups that have governed post-war France – also marks a seismic shift in the nation’s political landscape.
With 34% of the vote counted, the Interior Ministry said Ms Le Pen was leading on 24.6% followed by Mr Macron on 21.9%.
The early vote count includes primarily rural constituencies that lean to the right, while urban areas that lean left are counted later.
Mr Macron, a 39-year-old investment banker, made the run-off on the back of a grassroots start-up campaign without the backing of a major political party.
Defeated conservative candidate Francois Fillon said he would vote for Mr Macron on May 7 because Ms Le Pen’s programme “would bankrupt France” and throw the EU into chaos.