Far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen on Wednesday turned an appliance factory into a battleground for the blue-collar vote, upstaging rival Emmanuel Macron with a surprise campaign stop at the plant threatened with closure.
Chaotic scenes followed as Macron, a pro-EU centrist, sought to wrestle back the initiative by making his own, impromptu stop at the Whirlpool clothes-dryer plant in Amiens, spending more than an hour in Le Pen’s wake trying to reason with angry employees who asked why the former finance minister had not visited earlier.
The drama, broadcast live on French news channels, transformed the plant in northern France into a symbol of the diametrically opposed campaigns before the runoff election on Sunday next week.
Photo: AP
As Macron met elsewhere with the workers’ union leaders, Le Pen displayed her political guile by grabbing the spotlight and popping up outside the factory itself.
Surrounded by employees, she declared herself the workers’ candidate and vowed that if elected, she would not let the factory close.
“We’ll get you out of here,” Le Pen said as she hugged a woman in the crowd outside the plant. “I am the candidate of workers, the candidate of the French who don’t want their jobs taken away.”
Her wily campaign maneuver stole Macron’s thunder and put him on the defensive. It prompted him to make his own trip to the factory a few hours later — which quickly looked like he had fallen into a trap set by Le Pen.
Live television coverage of his visit looked chaotic and potentially damaging, with people whistling, booing and chanting “Marine, president” in the background.
However, Macron held his ground. Where Le Pen’s visit was short, Macron spent more than an hour patiently — and at times passionately — explaining in often-heated exchanges that he would not be able to stop companies from laying off workers.
“I won’t lie to you,” he said. “There is no miracle recipe.”
Because production at the plant is due to stop next year and move to Poland, the workers’ plight is a prickly issue for Macron as he campaigns on a pro-EU platform.
Le Pen seized on Whirlpool as a sign of the EU’s ills, calling it “the symbol of this odious globalization, which leads to plants moving abroad, destroying thousands of jobs.”
During an evening political rally in nearby Arras, Macron tried to reverse the unflattering image he gave in the afternoon.
He vehemently attacked Le Pen, saying she “stirs up hatred, lies, speaks about fears in order to use them, but gives no answers.”
While Le Pen presents herself as an anti-establishment candidate, Macron said that she is “the heiress of this system. She was born in a party castle, even if she claims to be from the people.”
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