The far-right leader claims she will win the National Front its highest score in history, writes RUADHÁN MAC CORMAICin Paris
FRENCH FAR-RIGHT leader Marine Le Pen has predicted she will cause an upset in the first round of the presidential election on Sunday by winning the National Front its highest score in history.
Le Pen, who is credited with 14 to 17 per cent in opinion polls, said she aimed to surpass the 16.7 per cent her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, achieved in 2002, a result that secured him a place in the run-off against the eventual winner, Jacques Chirac.
“Sarkozy has no chance of winning. He knows it himself,” Le Pen said, telling right-wing voters that opting for the incumbent would be a wasted vote.
Even if she does not qualify for the run-off, a prospect that has grown more remote in recent weeks, Le Pen hopes to use the presidential race to gain momentum for legislative elections in June.
At a rally in Paris on Tuesday night, Le Pen was cheered wildly as she hit out at banks, the EU
and immigration. “We will not abandon our fates to these stupid technocrats,” she said, referring to EU officials and her plan to withdraw France from the euro.
“I am the only candidate of the nation.”
“This is our home,” the audience shouted back.
Le Pen has attempted to refashion the front’s image since taking over from her father, the party’s founder, last year.
Using left-wing language, she has positioned herself as a critic of globalisation and a champion of protectionism and workers’ rights, and until recently gave less prominence to attacks on immigration and crime.
“I am in favour of redrawing political life to move away from the left/right division, which I
find old-fashioned and artificial, towards a division between those who believe in France, in the nation state, and those who no longer believe in the nation state,” Le Pen said.
The gap between Le Pen and French president Nicolas Sarkozy has widened from as little as one percentage point in January to more than 10 points today.
Barring an upset, her focus now is on securing third place ahead of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a far-left candidate whose rapid rise in the polls, from 7 per cent to 14 per cent, has been the surprise of the campaign.
Despite insisting in public that the contest is still wide open, there have been signs of growing despondency in the Sarkozy camp.
The pro-government Le Figaro put the incumbent’s recent dip in support down to “apparent hesitation” between hard-right and centrist strategies.
In a departure from its usual editorial line, the paper noted Sarkozy’s mantra that “there will be surprises” but said his “heart wasn’t really in it”.
A number of former Sarkozy allies from the right and left have declared this week that they will vote for Socialist François Hollande. They include Martin Hirsch and Fadela Amara, two of Sarkozy’s ministerial recruits from the left, and three former centre-right Chirac-era ministers, Azouz Begag, Corinne Lepage and Brigitte Girardin.
ELECTION DIARY
To tweet or not to tweet?
Could the presidential election be annulled because of Twitter? Or, if it doesn’t come to that, could Twitter users in France who divulge the projected results of the election before the moratorium ends at 8pm on Sunday each face a fine of €75,000?
That’s the sanction the authorities can impose on anyone in France who does so.
Polling stations in rural areas and small towns will close at 6.30pm on Sunday, but those in the cities will remain open until 7pm or 8pm.
In previous years, reliable projections from polling agencies have been available from 6.30pm and have been published on the websites of Belgian and Swiss media, causing them to crash.
But this time around, Twitter poses an awkward problem for the authorities.
In a statement yesterday, the Paris prosecutor said the police would pursue those who broke the law.
French media have adopted varying positions. Some have ordered their journalists not to report any projections until 8pm, but others have hinted they will defy the law by revealing their figures online as soon as they receive them.
Flagging morale
If Nicolas Sarkozy wanted a lift this week, he should have avoided reading Le Canard Enchaîné.
Under the headline Requiem pour Sarko, the paper reported that it could only find one of Sarkozy’s close allies who was willing to bet on him winning.
“The goose is cooked,” it quoted prime minister François Fillon telling advisers. Foreign minister Alain Juppé “no longer believes” in Sarkozy’s chances and former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin thinks he “has no chance of winning it”, according to Le Canard.
Absent father
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front, has been striking by his absence from his daughter’s campaign.
On Wednesday night came a reminder of why that might be.
Speaking after a rally, Le Pen (83) joked in front of television cameras that Nicolas Sarkozy’s initials reminded him of Nazi Germany.
“NS? National Socialist?”
Of Sarkozy’s recent open-air campaign event in the capital, Le Pen said: “I thought it was Nuremberg.”
Asked yesterday about her father’s comments, Marine, who has tried to detoxify the party- said: “Nuremberg? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I wasn’t born.”
Opinion polls
The polls have made bleak reading for Sarkozy over the past 10 days, showing that his momentum has stalled while François Hollande’s support has held steady.
The daily tracking poll from Ifop — the poll Sarkozy watches most closely — last night gave him a glimmer of hope, however.
It showed him leading in the first round with 28 per cent (up 0.5), ahead of Hollande with 26 per cent (no change) and Le Pen with 16 per cent (no change).
The survey also showed a slight closing of the gap in the run-off, with Hollande ahead on 53.5 per cent (down 0.5) to Sarkozy’s 46.5, although the shifts were within the margin of error.