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French parliamentary election continues 11 and 18 June.

Discuss about the world's headlines

Re: Le Pen: wave of riots boosts Pen's chance = she will win

PostAuthor: Piling » Fri Mar 10, 2017 3:49 am

I hope she could be officially charged before elections but I doubt of that.

Supporters of Le Pen and Fillon don't care about that. They are like Trumps' fans :D
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Re: Le Pen: wave of riots boosts Pen's chance = she will win

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Re: Le Pen: wave of riots boosts Pen's chance = she will win

PostAuthor: Anthea » Fri Mar 10, 2017 4:01 am

Piling wrote:I hope she could be officially charged before elections but I doubt of that.

Supporters of Le Pen and Fillon don't care about that. They are like Trumps' fans :D


I think that most people only make up their minds on who to vote for by watching the media reports in the last month prior to an election :shock:

They do NOT even bother to check up on the previous history :-s
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Re: Le Pen: wave of riots boosts Pen's chance = she will win

PostAuthor: Anthea » Wed Mar 22, 2017 11:39 pm

Is Le Pen miles ahead in French polls? 'Secret polls' claim National Front candidate is actually far more popular with voters than official surveys forecast

    Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen is forecast to lose in second round of election
    But a French columnist says 'hidden polls' show she may now have more support
    Comes after top candidates in the election clashed in a fiery television debate

Secret polls reveal Marine Le Pen to be more popular among voters than official surveys have forecast, according to a French media columnist.

The far-right candidate may even have the backing of more than 30 per cent of voters ahead of the presidential elections in late April and May, it has been claimed.

In an article for French newspaper Le Figaro, columnist Ivan Rioufol says the statistics comes from 'hidden surveys'.

Most publicly released polls see the National Front's Le Pen ahead of her rivals in the opening round of the contest - but losing in the following run-off.

Rioufol, a right-wing essayist and freelance journalist, posed the question in last Friday’s ‘Bloc-Notes’ column in Le Figaro that polls might be underestimating the popularity of Marine Le Pen.

Mr Rioufol pointed to the way Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen’s father and the founder of her National Front (FN) party, won 16.86 per cent of votes in the first round of the 2002 presidential election.

Mr Le Pen thus qualified for the second round of voting, despite numerous public figures including celebrities expressing their disgust at the electoral success of a convicted racist and anti-Semite.

Mr Rioufol wrote that 'his daughter almost doubles his score in the first round,' pointing to Ms Le Pen’s figures of up to 28 per cent.

In turn, Mr Rioufol suggested that hidden polls put her ratings even higher.

It was thought that Mr Mr Rioufol was writing figuratively, rather than literally, although he insisted that Ms Le Pen was hugely popular.

In turn, Jean-Michel Aphatie, a senior Le Figaro journalist, tweeted that according to his colleague Mr Rioufol 'hidden polls give more than 30% to Marine Le Pen.'

Gently mocking Mr Rioufol, Mr Aphatie wrote on Twitter: 'But they [the polls] must be published, dear colleague.'

Despite getting into the second round of voting in 2002, Mr Le Pen was roundly beaten by a Jacques Chirac vote of 82.2 per cent.

In official polls publicly released today, Le Pen was seen as winning 27 per cent of the vote in the first round compared to her rivals, centrist Emmanuel Macron with 24 per cent and conservative Francois Fillon with 18 per cent.

However, Macron is seen beating Le Pen in a run-off vote by 61 per cent to 39 per cent and Fillon would beat Le Pen 55 per cent to 45 per cent if he made it through to the second round.

It comes after Le Pen came under assault from all sides in a presidential election debate that provided a test of Macron's ambitions to be leader.

Le Pen and Macron, the two leading candidates according to opinion polls with just over a month to go before voting begins, traded barbs in the televised debate watched by nearly 10 million people on Monday.

Macron, the 39-year-old former economy minister who is untested at the ballot box, had the most to lose in his first major debate - and the first ever of the main candidates before the first round of voting - but he held his ground.

It was Le Pen, 48, who was repeatedly thrust onto the defensive as Macron, the conservative nominee Francois Fillon, the Socialist Party's Benoit Hamon and fifth-placed leftist radical Jean-Luc Melenchon all tore into her protectionist, anti-immigration programme.

Former frontrunner Fillon, who is trying to refocus attention on his politics after becoming embroiled in a host of scandals, said Le Pen's proposal to ditch the euro and bring back the franc would cause 'economic and social chaos'.

She accused him of 'scaremongering'.

Le Pen is hoping to ride the wave of populism that led British voters to choose to quit the EU and swept Donald Trump to power in the US, though the failure of the Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders's party to perform more strongly in his country's general election last week was a setback to her hopes.

While polls show that Le Pen would finish in the top two at the first round on April 23, they also show that she would be handily beaten in the May 7 runoff by either Macron or Fillon.

Le Pen was playing to her support base when she accused Macron of being 'in favour' of the burkini, a full-body swimsuit worn by some Muslim women that was banned by several coastal French towns last year.

He bridled at the suggestion, accusing her of 'lying' by 'twisting the truth' and seeking to 'divide the French' over the issue.

Fillon, 63, who has slipped into third in the polls over accusations he paid his wife hundreds of thousands of euros for doing parliamentary work of which there is little record, tried to present himself as a safe and experienced pair of hands.

The former prime minister poured scorn on Le Pen's proposal to pull out of the euro.

'You don't leave the euro and the protection afforded by the European Central Bank... for an adventure... that would ruin borrowers and savers alike,' Fillon said.

Le Pen retorted: 'That's called Project Fear, Mr Fillon. It was used before Brexit.'

Le Parisien newspaper said the debate was 'serious and educational' but 'not decisive'.

Le Pen is hoping to ride the wave of populism that led British voters to choose to quit the EU and swept Donald Trump to power in the US

It welcomed the focus on policy after a campaign so far overshadowed by Fillon's expenses woes and Le Pen's refusal to meet investigating magistrates over claims she misused European Parliament allowances.

'At last the subject was politics, which in a campaign in which scandals have obliterated policies and ideas, was starting to become urgent,' Le Parisien said in an editorial.

The rightwing Le Figaro praised Macron, saying he was 'omnipresent' in the debate 'and outpaced his opponents'.

Several commentators also lauded the firebrand Melenchon, noted for his rhetorical flourishes.

Former economy minister Macron was most animated when he took on Le Pen over the burkini.

Le Pen said the garment was a sign of the 'rise of radical Islam in our country' and accused Macron of supporting it.

Macron said it was above all 'a public order problem'.

'Do not use it to divide the French,' he told the National Front (FN) leader, accused her of trying to transform 'the over four million French people, whose religion is Islam... into enemies of the Republic'.

A former investment banker, Macron himself came under scrutiny over his links to the rich.

A total of 11 candidates, spanning the spectrum from the Trotskyist left to the far right, are running for president.

Six other candidates currently with low polling numbers were excluded from Monday's debate but are expected to take part in the next one.

Surveys show that millions of voters are still undecided after five years of unpopular Socialist rule under President Francois Hollande, marked by high unemployment, low growth and jihadist attacks that have killed over 230 people.

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... polls.html
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Re: Le Pen: Popularity growing more than 30% = she will win

PostAuthor: Anthea » Thu Mar 23, 2017 10:36 pm

French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen says London attack shows why border controls are needed

    ISIS has claimed responsibility for yesterday's attack which killed four in London
    Le Pen, far-Right candidate for France's Presidency, wants more border controls
    But it is not clear how border controls would have prevented yesterday's attack
    Theresa May said today the attacker, not yet identified, was born in Britain
    French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault warned against 'knee-jerk' measures

France's far-Right candidate for next month's Presidential elections, Marine Le Pen, seized on yesterday's London attack as further proof that tighter border controls were needed in Europe.

Her comments flew in the face of British Prime Minister Theresa May's announcement in Parliament that the man who ran down and killed three people before stabbing to death a policeman was actually born in Britain.

The National Front leader, who is leading the polls in the race to become the next President of France, told a TV station: 'The problem we have nowadays is this form of low-cost terrorism. We must control our borders.'

Security is a major campaign issue ahead of next month's elections in France, in which Le Pen is expected to reach the second round on a nationalist, anti-immigration platform.

It is not clear how controlling borders would have prevented yesterday's horrific attack in Westminster.

The lone wolf attacker, who has not been identified, also injured 29 people when he drove a Hyundai 4x4 vehicle into pedestrians walking across Westminster Bridge.

The injured included 12 Britons, three French children, two Romanians, four South Koreans, two Greeks, and one each from Germany, Poland, Ireland, China, Italy and the United States.

France's Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who was in London today to meet British ministers and the injured schoolchildren's families, said knee-jerk measures were not the answer.

'We won't put up a wall that would stop life from continuing,' he said.

France is a member of the open-border Schengen agreement that operates among several European countries.

French anti-terrorist police have opened an inquiry into the incident - an automatic move that was due to the involvement of French victims.

ISIS have claimed responsibility for the London attack but Mrs May said the assailant had been known to MI5 but considered a 'peripheral' figure.

The attack has dominated French news coverage and served as a poignant reminder of militant attacks on French soil that have killed more 230 people since the start of 2015.

Meanwhile it has emerged that a man using a car with French registration plates tried to drive a car into a crowd of people in the centre of the Belgian city of Antwerp today.

Le Pen, who has the backing of about a quarter of the electorate and is running neck-and-neck in opinion polls with independent Emmanuel Macron, said countries needed to co-operate more with each other on sharing intelligence.

She advocated closing down mosques with links to extremism and revoking the French nationality of those with more than one passport who were guilty of committing attacks.

The deadliest attacks in France over the past two years have been claimed by ISIS.

In one of those attacks, a Tunisian-born ISIS supporter killed 86 people in the southern city of Nice when he drove his lorry along a seafront promenade.

British investigators say the London assault was an act of terrorism that Prime Minister May said had been sparked by a warped Islamist ideology.

Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader who is friends with Le Pen, said today British people wanted answers from politicians about what they planned to do to stop such attacks.

Farage told Fox News in America the attack bolstered US president Donald Trump's case for tougher vetting of migrants, claiming countries which opened their door to immigration from the Middle East were 'inviting in terrorism'.

Again his remarks seemed at odds with Mrs May's statement that yesterday's was born in Britain and was not an immigrant.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... trols.html
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Re: Le Pen: Popularity growing more than 30% = she will win

PostAuthor: Piling » Fri Mar 24, 2017 3:27 am

Stupid cow :

1/ The terrorist was a British citizen

2/ UK is out of Schengen area.
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Re: Le Pen: Popularity growing more than 30% = she will win

PostAuthor: Anthea » Sat Mar 25, 2017 1:54 am

Piling wrote:Stupid cow :

1/ The terrorist was a British citizen

2/ UK is out of Schengen area.


Like most politicians - she has no idea what is going on :shock:

There again, most of those who vote have even less idea than the people they vote for =))
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Re: Le Pen gains support following Paris terror attack

PostAuthor: Anthea » Thu Apr 20, 2017 11:02 pm

Terror in Paris could be a last-minute boost for Le Pen

    Champs Elysees shooting happened days before French presidential election

    It is thought it could send voters flocking to National Front leader Le Pen

    She tonight blamed the terror threat facing France on 'laxity' in a TV debtate

    It is not yet known what motivated the gunman responsible for attack

French presidential candidate Francois Fillon has called for the election campaign to be suspended following this evening's attack in Paris.

A police officer was killed and two more were injured after a gunman opened fire close to the Champs Elysees.

A terror probe has been opened, and French President Francois Hollande will tomorrow hold a security cabinet meeting.

The French public are set to go to the polls on Sunday, and the attack happened as candidates went head-to-head in a television debate.

Both Fillon and National Front leader Marine Le Pen have cancelled scheduled events tomorrow following the attack.

Francois Fillon has called for election campaigning to be suspended following this evening's attack in Paris

A police officer was shot dead and two more were injured by a gunman close to the Champs Elysees

All candidates involved in the race to become the next French head of state have expressed their horror at the attack.

The latest attack in the heart of Paris so close to an election could send voters flocking to far-right leader Marine Le Pen on Sunday, experts believe.

The National Front leader this evening said the terror threat facing France stemmed from 'laxity', and within minutes of the attack tweeted her solidarity with security forces.

It has yet to be confirmed what motivated the gunman, who is believed to have shot a police officer dead and injured two others.

A poll earlier this week found that more than half of French police officers plan to cast their vote for the populist anti-immigration politician at the weekend.

The populist French candidate said the terror threat facing the country was a result of 'laxity' in a television debate tonight

Within minutes of the attack, French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen tweeted her solidarity with security forces

In a televised debate this evening, she said: 'We are suffering the consequences of a laxity that has continued for years.'

A study released earlier this week revealed that 51 per cent of French police officers plan to vote for Le Pen in the upcoming polls.

The poll by IFOP found that 65 per cent of frontline officers would support her in the election.

Following the attack, which is believed to have claimed the lives of two police officers, social media users suggested Le Pen could have the most to gain from the attack.

Two police officers are believed to have been shot dead in a shooting at the Champs Elysees in Paris tonight

One person wrote on Twitter: '#ChampsEllysees terrorist's attack just benefit Marine Le Pen & FN the most racist party in France. The terrorist are very helpful actually.'

Several posted messages branding the National Front leader France's 'last hope' and another said: 'Another terrorist attack in Paris. Just days before the election. Will only deepen support for Le Pen.'

The 11 candidates were appearing on a television program ahead of the first round of voting in the two-part election when the attack that left one officer dead happened Thursday night.

Candidates in the upcoming election have voiced their horror over the attack this evening

Centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron offered his thoughts to the family of the dead officer.

Socialist Benoit Hamon tweeted his "full support" to police against terrorism.

The first round of the presidential race is scheduled on Sunday. The two top contenders will advance to a runoff on May 7.

For weeks, centrist former banker Emmanuel Macron and Le Pen have been out in front but opinion polls now show there is a chance that any of the four leading candidates could reach the second-round runoff on May 7.

Though Le Pen and Macron have become frontrunners, scandal-plagued conservative Francois Fillon and far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon have closed the gap substantially in the last two weeks.

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... e-Pen.html
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Re: Le Pen gains support following Paris terror attack

PostAuthor: Piling » Fri Apr 21, 2017 6:53 am

Fillon and Le Pen have decided to cancel their last public meeting after the attack. Not a good way to face terrorism by stepping back front of threats. Big mouths, small acts.
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Re: Le Pen gains support following Paris terror attack

PostAuthor: Anthea » Fri Apr 21, 2017 3:19 pm

Macron is shooting up - seems to me anyone could win this :D

I read that Macron married his former teacher who is 24 years older than him :ymdevil:

We are both teachers ;) ;;) :ymparty:

Emmanuel Macron

At rallies, Macron seems to give himself completely to the moment - hoarse with emotion, almost Messianic, he shouts into the auditorium, head thrown back, arms wide, telling his political fans that he loves them, that he needs them beside him. It’s rock-star politics.

But in an interview with Anne Fulda, his wife Brigitte hinted at another side to Macron.

Nobody enters his perimeter. He keeps people at a distance.”

Macron's wife Brigitte

Then there’s the story of how Macron handled his departure from President Hollande’s government, in order to launch a presidential bid of his own.

According to the daily newspaper, Le Monde, two days before launching En Marche, Macron took the president aside at the Elysee Palace and told him “as if it were nothing” – “Oh by the way, I wanted to tell you: I’m doing a thing in Amiens on 6 April. I’m launching a youth movement, a sort of think tank.”

“He reached that day the peak of his duplicity,” a former adviser told the paper. It’s what I call the ambiguity of Emmanuel Macron. There’s political ambiguity, but ambiguity also in his relations with other people, including powerful people.”

“He plays a game of smoke and mirrors with the president,” Endeweld says. “Like a snake, he lets him go to sleep, and Francois Hollande didn’t want to face up to reality.

You have to understand that Macron is the narcissistic projection of the son Hollande would like to have had. He was politically seduced by Macron.”

Marc Endeweld

“I think he’s someone who’s very hard and determined behind the amiable and seductive facade,” Fulda concludes. Like a lot of intelligent people, he gets bored easily. He likes the seduction and the chase, but once he has it, he wants to move on to something else.”

Macron believes strongly in his own powers of persuasion. He talks to everyone, smiling for selfies, ready to debate with both friends and adversaries, and during his time as economy minister, famously walked out of a meeting with students in Herault to engage with protesters shouting outside.

They were demonstrating against the economic reforms Macron was trying to pass. Macron, as one French paper put it, “lost first his smile, and then his temper”.

“I can’t afford a suit like yours,” one of the protesters said to him.

“You don’t scare me with your T-shirt,” Macron shot back. “The best way to afford a suit is to work.”

There have been several such cracks in Macron’s smooth exterior during his presidential campaign. Two months before the first round of the election, he caused uproar by saying that French actions in the Algerian War of Independence constituted a “crime against humanity”.

The same month, he sparked protest among left-wing voters by saying that those who had demonstrated against gay marriage had been “humiliated”.

Moments like this appear to some as unscripted glimpses of the “real” Macron - the gaffes of a young, inexperienced politician. But according to Nicolas Prisette, the author of a book on Macron, they are instead carefully calculated to appeal to various parts of his support. “The extreme left is delighted about these adventures, which have the added virtue of consolidating the sympathies of some right-wing voters,” he writes.

Macron attacks the totems of the left, and seduces the electorate of the right.”

Nicolas Prisette

It’s not always easy to separate the storytelling from the substance when it comes to Emmanuel Macron. An investment banker who launches a grassroots movement; a product of the establishment who runs as an anti-system candidate; a private man who seems open to everyone, but needs no one.

“He’s complex,” his school friend Marguet says. “I don’t think there is a ‘real’ Emmanuel Macron.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt ... uel_macron
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Re: Le Pen gains support following Paris terror attack

PostAuthor: Piling » Fri Apr 21, 2017 5:14 pm

I can't bear Macron. He is full of emptiness.
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Re: Le Pen gains support following Paris terror attack

PostAuthor: Anthea » Sat Apr 22, 2017 1:02 am

Piling wrote:I can't bear Macron. He is full of emptiness.


Forget the politics - I am looking for a handsome man who is 24 years younger than me and can cook :D

OK back to the politics - why has May called a snap election in the UK - it does not make any sense :shock:

Promises to be an interesting few weeks in France and UK :-s
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Re: Le Pen gains support following Paris terror attack

PostAuthor: Anthea » Sat Apr 22, 2017 1:27 am

Just a reminder of the fun-filled days ahead =))

French election that could sink the EU

After 238 deaths at the hands of jihadi terrorists in just two years, France was coming to terms with yet another one yesterday. But might Thursday night’s Paris slaughter of a French policeman by a previously convicted Islamist gunman also go down as an historic turning point?

Coming just hours before the official cessation of all campaigning ahead of tomorrow’s presidential vote, it is certainly possible. Because a polarised nation increasingly drawn towards two political extremes now stands on the cusp of the most uncertain and unhappy election in modern French history.

It is one which not only has all the EU grandees in Brussels in a blind panic but could even dictate what happens in Britain. For France could be about to deliver a result even more seismic than last year’s British referendum vote for Brexit. The country which has given the world the phrase déjà vu has never seen anything remotely like this.

National Front candidate Marine Le Pen. A polarised nation increasingly drawn towards two political extremes now stands on the cusp of the most uncertain and unhappy election in modern French history
Marine Le Pen calls for border controls after French attack

A headline in the normally highbrow French daily, L’Opinion, the other day summed up the national mood ahead of the vote: ‘The Crazydential Election.’

The field is now wide open between an old school fascist, a conservative mired in criminal investigations, a shiny Blairite banker who has never been elected to anything and a charismatic Maoist who wants a ‘citizens’ revolution’. =))

To the horror of the EU establishment, it is no longer impossible — or even improbable — that the fascist and the Maoist could triumph on Sunday and go through to next month’s best-of-two final.

This week’s jihadi attack certainly adds fresh momentum to the campaign of Marine Le Pen from the overtly xenophobic Far Right Front National (FN). The more she pushes ahead in one direction, the more the Far Left gains ground in the other.

If both of them triumph tomorrow, that would cause pandemonium. Both have pledged a French referendum on leaving the EU and both want ‘Frexit’. Regardless of who won a fortnight later, it would spell the end of the EU as we know it.

Because, in the event of a ‘Frexit’, the whole European project — of which France is a founder member and integral pillar — would collapse.

Even France’s own EU commissioner — former finance minister Pierre Moscovici — admitted the election of Le Pen in France would be ‘the end’ of the EU.

And in the pan-European mayhem and crashing markets that would follow on Monday morning, Theresa May would be the last rock of sanity in a continental sea of madness.

Game over.

The truth is that, frankly, anything could happen in tomorrow’s first round vote. After all, this is a presidential campaign which includes a candidate (there are 11 in total) who claims that the Queen is a drug smuggler and that homosexuality was invented by the KGB.

Having criss-crossed France in pursuit of the main players, I am not surprised the old European order is terrified.

After blaming last year’s unexpected wins for Brexit and Donald Trump on ‘populism’, the liberal commentariat had been fixating on Marine Le Pen as the next ‘populist’ threat.

In doing so, they had completely overlooked another candidate who is now enjoying unexpected success. And Jean-Luc Melenchon doesn’t fit their Right-wing ‘populist’ narrative at all.

Here is an ultra-Leftie who makes Jeremy Corbyn look like a Tory wet. He wants a wealth tax of 100 per cent, closer ties with Vladimir Putin, the abolition of nuclear power and, above all, a French departure from Nato and the EU. And he is on a late surge for second place in the opinion polls.

Since World War II, most French presidential races have boiled down to a U.S.-style binary choice between Left and Right.

But that model has fallen apart. The dismal record of outgoing president Francois Hollande has seen his Socialist Party collapse and the French Left fragment in two directions.

His successor as official Socialist candidate, Benoit Hamon, trails far behind the fiery Melenchon’s ‘France Unbowed’ movement.

But Hamon has also been eclipsed by the new hero of the moderate Left. Emmanuel Macron, a youthful ex-banker, claims to be a fresh, pro-European voice for those fed up with ‘old politics’.

Over on the French Right, the landscape should be dominated by Francois Fillon, a former prime minister and managerial smoothie often described as a ‘French Thatcher’. After beating several powerful candidates including former President Nicolas Sarkozy to win the nomination of the Republican opposition party, he seemed destined to go all the way.

Suddenly, in January, the French Press unearthed details of public money being paid to his family for nebulous jobs.

It was alleged that Fillon’s Welsh-born wife, Penelope, had pocketed hundreds of thousands of pounds as his ‘parliamentary assistant’, without lifting a finger. And the accusations kept piling up. It means he now lags some way behind the one name familiar to the British public — Marine Le Pen.

She hopes that the FN’s blend of immigrant-bashing and old-style protectionism will pull in angry voters from both Left and Right.

She has trotted out fresh pie-in-the-sky policies ranging from a ban on new supermarkets (to help small retailers) to a new retirement age — of 60. But her big election theme is that multiculturalism is endangering French society.

That is the message she keeps hammering home, as I witness ahead of Thursday’s killing.

Here is an ultra-Leftie who makes Jeremy Corbyn look like a Tory wet. He wants a wealth tax of 100 per cent, closer ties with Vladimir Putin, the abolition of nuclear power, says Robert Hardman

My first stop is an invitation-only rally for Le Pen loyalists in Paris. Her campaign team clearly want to present a statesmanlike image, hiring a former ballroom near the Arc de Triomphe.

Heavies with wires in their ears try to look the part, but everyone is on edge. There is no warm-up act, and there will be no questions afterwards.

The party leader rattles through her speech as if she just wants to get it out of the way. There is precious little joie de vivre, though some British observers are struck by the way that, at a certain angle, the FN leader is — with exquisite irony — a dead ringer for the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee.

‘A multicultural society is a multiconflict society,’ Mme Le Pen declares. ‘Multiculturalism is the weapon of Islamic fundamentalists, permitted by useful idiots in the name of tolerance.’

She then tells the crowd a whopper about Britain being in the grip of Sharia law and says that, if elected, she will compel Muslim imams to deliver their sermons in French.

At the end, her loyalists are on their feet. Interestingly, they are not all white.

Maurice Puisard, 46, a nurse and FN council candidate whose parents are from French Guyana, says all the family vote FN: ‘This country has a big problem with security and authority. Marine Le Pen is the only one strong enough to deal with it.’

Mme Le Pen leaves, and the cameras engulf her again as journalists seek clarity on her latest toxic claim that France should feel no shame about deporting thousands of French Jews to Nazi death camps in 1942 — on the grounds that the officials involved were not working for ‘France’ but for the puppet Vichy regime.

‘This argument has been manipulated to discredit me,’ she says above the melee. ‘Of course I condemn the Vichy government, but Vichy was not France.’

Mme Le Pen has worked hard in recent years to distance both herself and her party from the racist rantings of her father, FN founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. Last year, he was fined £25,000 by a French court for dismissing the Nazi gas chambers as a ‘detail’ of history. On other occasions, he has attacked France’s football team for having ‘too many black players’.

Now at a stroke, on the eve of the election, Mme Le Pen turns out to be her father’s daughter after all.

Her genocidal buck-passing has caused outrage far beyond France’s Jewish community, as has a new biography alleging disturbing neo-Nazi sympathies among some of her closest friends (many of whom apparently refer to Adolf Hitler as ‘Uncle’).

Yet opinion polls were already suggesting she could expect 24 per cent of the vote tomorrow. The latest Islamist attack is only going to bolster her support. A recent poll suggested that most French police officers are going to vote for her.

Mme Le Pen has worked hard in recent years to distance both herself and her party from the racist rantings of her father, FN founder Jean-Marie Le Pen

The other front-runner, Emmanuel Macron, is also scoring around 24 per cent with his pitch for disillusioned moderates from either side.

At a packed rally, I ask dozens of people the same question: why Macron? All answer: ‘Jeunesse’ (Youth). Here in Britain, the allure of the cool young politician is over. We prefer grey-haired wisdom these days. But in France, politics has long been dominated by old men running old party machines.

All of which makes Macron, 39, a dizzyingly fresh proposition.

A slightly nasal financier, married to his former school-teacher, 24 years his senior, he is not pin-up material (and has had to bat off slurs about his sexuality). But compared to some dinosaurs in French politics, he is Peter Pan.

The crowd at this concert hall in the Pyrenean town of Pau is too big for the venue. Some 5,000 have squeezed in with another 1,500 locked out. Pumped up by dance anthems, mixed with audio clips of Martin Luther King, the audience is almost hysterical when he finally arrives, an hour late.

The local mayor does the warm-up, joking that while Macron may be young, Napoleon had already been emperor for six years by the time he was his age.

And then it goes a bit flat. Macron is no Napoleon. He seems twitchy, even nervous, as he begins with a prolonged homage to this corner of France, home to his late grandmother. At one point, I fear he may be about to blub.

A high-flying graduate of France’s ultra-elitist ‘rulers’ academy’, Ecole Nationale d’Administration, he went on to be a Rothschild’s banker. In 2014, he was parachuted into the Socialist government for a couple of years as Finance Minister before leaving to work on his own presidential bid.

Macron talks so softly that his audience have to keep completely quiet to hear his soliloquies about uniting Left and Right.

‘Our democracy is ill. I want to restore confidence in it,’ he says. ‘For me, this job is about presiding, not governing,’ he continues slowly as if unveiling a big new idea (isn’t that why the job title is ‘President’?) The crowd clap.

It is the only French rally I see all week with EU flags everywhere. Macron is the only overtly pro-EU candidate. Jean-Claude Juncker and the Brussels establishment will be praying for a Macron win.

But it is only in his very last sentence that Macron raises his voice as he declares: ‘Vive La France! Vive La Republique.’

His is one of two campaigns with a sense of gathering momentum. The other is in action at the other end of the country where 25,000 people have gathered in Lille to hear Jean–Luc Melenchon. Like Macron, the ex-teacher and ex-journalist has also founded his own movement. As well as demanding Frexit and punitive taxation of the rich, ‘France Unbowed’ sees Russia as a better ally than the USA.

Melenchon wants to raise the minimum wage by 15 per cent and splurge cash like sweeties. It may be the economics of the madhouse but it’s going down a storm, especially with France’s youth.

The similarities with Italy’s anarchic but phenomenally successful populist Five Star Movement — led by the anti-establishment comedian-turned-politician Beppe Grillo — grow more obvious by the day. Hence the alarm bells in Brussels.

A woman looks at a poster with the Disney character Uncle Scrooge fixed over the official poster of French presidential election candidate for the far-left coalition "La France insoumise" Jean-Luc Melenchon

Melenchon, 65, is widely regarded to have the slickest social media presence. He encourages his supporters to play a video game called ‘fiscal kombat’ in which a mini-Melenchon beats up his main rivals to score points.

‘We are the only force uniting the country today,’ Melenchon tells his listeners.

National unity is also the battle-cry of Francois Fillon, the mainstream conservative who currently jostles with Melenchon for third place at around 18 to 20 per cent.

Fillon’s supporters insist that the financial scandal over payments to his family — or ‘les affaires’ as they call it — is just ‘media conspiracy’.

But the ambiance at the Fillon rally I attend in a Marseilles exhibition hall says it all. In terms of age, dress sense and manners, it is much like a Tory party conference. Supportive and enthusiastic they may be. Triumphal, they are not. His latest electoral slogan — ‘You don’t have to like me, just let me get on with the job’ — has an air of desperation.

‘Fillon! President!’ they chant with modest fervour. He looks proud but forlorn; not quite broken, not exactly defiant. He is a forceful orator, making a speech on everything from France’s nuclear independence to kicking drug-dealers out of social housing. He refers constantly to ‘le projet’.

Saluting France’s Nobel prize-winners, he insists that France must give the economy ‘the fuel of freedom’ by cutting regulation.

Afterwards, his supporters are super-loyal if not bursting with optimism. ‘He is the only man who understands our history, our character, our culture — and who can turn this country around,’ says Marie, 35, an architect who would rather not give me her full name as she doesn’t want work colleagues to know she supports Fillon.

Until this week, conventional thinking decreed that Mme Le Pen and Macron would go through to the second round and that the latter would romp home on a tide of centrist national unity — followed by inevitable celebrations of the death of ‘populism’.

And history shows us that France, in its elections, has an unerring habit of reverting to the status quo, leaving its bloated state behemoth untouched.

This, after all, is the country which invented the word for bossy state control of everything — dirigiste.

Yet, Thursday’s outrage may, finally, be about to change all that.

Bruno Cautres, political analyst at the widely-respected Cevipof/Sciences Po think-tank, points to a startling gap in the polls: ‘Remember that up to 40 per cent of people are undecided. So anything is still possible.’

That includes a Le Pen v Melenchon run-off — which would send the EU and the euro into free-fall.

For now, in this fearful, unhappy country, it’s all about as clear as my bowl of steaming bouillabaisse.

Link to Article - Photos -Video:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... nk-EU.html
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Re: Le Pen gains support following Paris terror attack

PostAuthor: Piling » Sat Apr 22, 2017 4:39 am

If Melenchon wins the 2nd turn, some rightists could prefer Le Pen to that "Communist" as they call him… :sad:

As Trump seems a bit mentally confused nowadays, he might bombed Paris one day, thinking that it is North-Korea :smile:
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Re: Le Pen gains support following Paris terror attack

PostAuthor: Benny » Sat Apr 22, 2017 12:07 pm

"As Trump seems a bit mentally confused nowadays, he might bombed Paris one day, thinking that it is North-Korea" =))

So true!

A nice weekend to you all!

/B

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Re: Le Pen gains support following Paris terror attack

PostAuthor: Piling » Sat Apr 22, 2017 12:33 pm

Tomorrow, I have to go to the French Consulate just for voting : Duhok-Erbil-Duhok in the same day, so circa 320 km un taxi.

Kurds here are amazed that I am ready to do it even twice or thrice only for elections :D
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