French left-wing voters are casting ballots in a nationwide presidential primary aimed at producing a candidate strong enough to confront formidable conservative and nationalist rivals in the April to May general election.
Seven candidates from the Socialist Party and its allies were running in yesterday’s first round of voting. The top two vote-getters advance to a runoff on Sunday next week.
Center-leaning former French prime minister Manuel Valls is a leading contender, but faces formidable challenges from left-wingers Arnaud Montebourg and Benoit Hamon, both former government ministers.
The primary’s winner is to have tough competition from candidates on the far left, center, right and far right in a campaign marked by anti-immigration populism and economic stagnation.
Valls, who quit French President Francois Hollande’s Cabinet to run, was the long-time favorite to win the nomination before campaigning began.
However, Valls’ bid has been viewed as lackluster and some pollsters believe it will be two candidates from the party’s left flank — protectionist maverick Arnaud Montebourg and Benoit Hamon — who emerge yesterday to contest a second-round run-off a week later.
The odds would be stacked against the victor, with many polls showing the Socialist candidate will be eliminated in the first round of the French presidential election on April 23.
Projections suggest the election is shaping up as a three-way battle between conservative former French prime minister Francois Fillon, far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, a 39-year-old former French minister for the economy and finance who has also served in the governing Socialist administration.
Macron, a relative newcomer to politics who resigned from the government in August last year to found his own centrist movement, has stolen a march on his Socialist rivals over the past two weeks with speeches packed to capacity.
A poll published on Thursday last week gave Macron between 17 and 21 percent of the vote in the first round of the election.
Some Socialist heavyweights have hinted they could support him over their party’s nominee if he looks to have a better chance against Le Pen.
Macron himself has ruled out a pact with the Socialists, announcing on Thursday last week that he would field his own candidates in parliamentary elections set for June.
Communist-backed Jean-Luc Melenchon, who, like Macron, is polling in double digits, also risks splitting the left-wing vote.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
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