No Red Army invasion if I win, says Melenchon
A SILVER-TONGUED revolutionary who has become the surprise challenger in France’s electoral race has dismissed fears he could create a crisis promising there would be “no plague of frogs” or “Red Amy tanks” in Paris should he clinch the presidency.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 65, an admirer of Hugo Chávez and Mao Zedong, is enjoying a spectacular late surge in support in France’s most unpredictable presidential race in modern times.
With the prospect of reaching the May 7 runoff no longer a pipe dream, the Communist-backed contender received a hero’s welcome at a rally in Lille, northern France, on Wednesday night, where 12,000 supporters inside a hall and many more outside roared: “Resistance, resistance.”
Mr Mélenchon mocked his notoriety. “They announce that my winning the election would bring nuclear winter, a plague of frogs, Red Army tanks and the landing of the Venezuelans,” said the former Socialist senator, fighting his second presidential campaign. “They’re taking you for imbeciles.”
In 2012, he garnered 11 per cent; this time, he told the crowd, his plan to end France’s “presidential monarchy” could go all the way with their help.
Support for the fiery orator has surged notably after he dominated two presidential TV debates.
Mr Mélenchon – who wants to slap a 100 per cent tax on earnings over €400,000 (£340,000) and pull France out of the European Union unless it drops its “neo-liberal” model – is now only around five points behind the two leaders, Marine Le Pen, the far-Right leader, and Emmanuel Macron, the independent centrist, and has overtaken scandal-hit conservative François Fillon in two opinion polls.
An IFOP Fiducial survey on Wednesday even crowned the leader of La France Insoumise (Unbowed France) the country’s favourite politician.
Supporters in Lille were clearly seduced. “I’m here as much for the person as his ideas,” said Nicolas Serry, 37, a civil servant, adding that the current system of governance in France was broken. “If it worked, we’d be governed by people from a cross-section of society. That’s not the case,” he said.
It raises the prospect of a runoff between the Eurosceptic hard-Left and Eurosceptic hard-Right, in the form of Ms Le Pen. Both candidates are antiAmerican, anti-German, anti-globalist, anti-Nato, and pro-Putin.
At a rally on Tuesday, Mr Macron branded Mr Mélenchon a political dinosaur, saying: “The Communist revolutionary was a Socialist senator way back when I was in secondary school!”
Mr Fillon painted the “Communist” Mr Mélenchon and Ms Le Pen as two sides of the same Europhobic coin neither of whom would “get the French economy up and running again”.
Mr Mélenchon retorted: “If you elect one of those three, you’ll be spitting blood.” He added: “Versailles court is having fun while the people are starving to death. The limit has been reached and I am the sign of that.”