French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has attacked her rival, former French economics minister Emmanuel Macron, suggesting he is a “hysterical, radical Europeanist” who is weak on terror.
Her tirade came as the country’s demoralized mainstream parties threw their weight behind her opponent on the first day of campaigning for the presidential runoff on May 7.
Announcing she was stepping aside temporarily from the presidency of the Front National (FN) to be “above partisan considerations” and devote herself to the race for the Elysee, Le Pen said of Macron: “He is for total open borders. He says there is no such thing as French culture. There is not one area where he shows one ounce of patriotism.”
Photo: AP
Le Pen finished second to the former investment banker in the first round vote on Sunday.
In a symbolic gesture aimed at underlining the idea that the president of France should represent the whole country, not just their party, she told France 2 television she was now “no longer the president of the Front National. I am the candidate for the French presidency.”
Politicians from the Socialist and Les Reublicains parties — the mainstream center-left and center-right groups that have dominated French politics for decades, but found themselves shut out by voters — united on Monday to urge the country to back Macron and reject Le Pen’s populist, anti-EU and anti-immigration nationalism.
French President Francois Hollande said he would vote for Macron because Le Pen represented “both the danger of the isolation of France and of rupture with the EU.”
A far-right president would “deeply divide France,” he said. “Faced with such a risk, it is not possible to take refuge in indifference.”
Le Pen’s aim in temporarily stepping aside from her party’s presidency is to appeal to the supporters of losing first-round candidates, particularly some of those who backed Fillon, who finished third, and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan.
She said she had “always considered the president of France as the president of all of the French people, who must unite all of the French people.”
The move would allow her more freedom to “change certain aspects of her project and rally support,” party sources told Le Monde.
Macron, 39, who founded his En Marche! movement only this time last year and has never held elected office, became the clear favorite to become France’s youngest president after winning 24.01 percent of the vote, ahead of Le Pen’s 21.3 percent.
Polls have consistently predicted Macron would win a head-to-head contest between the two by up to 25 points.
Le Pen leapt on the string of endorsements for Macron to paint him as the candidate of a discredited political establishment, attacking the “rotten old republican front” of center-left and center-right parties that have aligned to keep the Front National from power whenever it has come close to it.
“I’ve come here to start the second-round campaign in the only way I know, on the ground with the French people,” she said on a visit to a market in the northern town of Rouvroy.
Le Pen said that she wanted to draw attention to “important subjects, including Islamist terrorism, on which Mr Macron is, to say the least, weak.”
France has suffered a series of terror attacks by violent militants in the past two years that have left 239 people dead.
The two candidates yesterday were to attend a ceremony honoring a policeman who was shot dead on the Champs Elysees in Paris, less than less than 72 hours before Sunday’s vote.
Two other officers were seriously injured in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group.
Macron’s upbeat, internationalist vision of a tolerant France and a stronger, united Europe with open borders is in stark contrast to Le Pen’s French-first policies which aim to suspend the EU’s open border agreement on France’s frontiers, expel foreigners on intelligence service watchlists, restore the franc and possibly leave the EU.
Macron drew early criticism on Monday after spending Sunday evening with supporters and En Marche! activists at the well-known — but not upmarket — La Rotonde brasserie in Paris.
“We need to be humble. The election hasn’t been won and we need to bring people together to win,” Richard Ferrand, the movement’s secretary-general, said.
Le Pen, whose father, Jean-Marie, reached the 2002 French presidential election runoff, gained 1.2 million new voters compared with her 2012 presidential bid.
Louis Aliot, a Front National vice president, said she offered an alternative for patriots, adding he was “not convinced the French are willing to sign a blank cheque for Mr Macron.”
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