PARIS: A new chapter opened in France’s closely contested presidential election campaign on Sunday as Socialists voted to choose their champion and conservatives fought to keep their scandal-hit campaign on track. Polling opened at in the morning in a Socialist primary runoff that pits pro-business ex-premier Manuel Valls against hard-left lawmaker Benoit Hamon for the Socialist ticket. Francois Fillon — chosen as conservative candidate last year by his party The Republicans but hurt last week by a newspaper claim that his wife was paid for fake work — was meanwhile due to hold a rally on the outskirts of Paris.
Hamon is favourite to beat Valls in the Socialist primary’s head-to-head vote, but neither man has much chance of winning the presidential race itself after five years of unpopular Socialist rule. Until Fillon tripped up over his British wife Penelope’s pay, prompting the opening of an official inquiry into the matter, he was favourite to win the election proper. Opinion polls showed him beating far-right National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen in a run-off vote on May 7 with a comfortable two-thirds of the vote. Popularity polls since have shown his rating slip slightly, although there have been no polls on voting intentions since the scandal broke. Whichever Socialist wins on Sunday, opinion polls show him destined for a humiliating fifth place in the April 23 first round of the election itself, behind Fillon, Le Pen, centrist Emmanuel Macron, and rebel left-winger Jean-Luc Melenchon who shunned the primaries.
Nevertheless, Sunday’s outcome is important to the result, and for the future of the Socialist party, unpopular after five years of high unemployment under President Francois Hollande and split by a pro-business policy u-turn that angered its left-wingers.
A victory by leftist Hamon, who wants to give a “universal income” to all citizens at a cost of 350 billion euros and impose a tax on robots, would boost Macron’s chances by pushing Valls’ centre-left pro-business supporters into the former investment banker’s arms.
Hamon, a former education minister, was kicked out of Valls’ government in 2014 for differences on economic policy. Macron was Valls’ economy minister until he quit last year to launch his presidential campaign. But he was not a party member, and spurned the Socialist primaries to stand at the head of his own centrist political movement.
The latest polls show him breathing down the necks of Fillon and Le Pen. A Hamon win could tempt moderate Socialist lawmakers and voters towards Macron. It could also hasten a break-up of the Socialist party, analysts say.
Fillon sought to get his campaign back on track on Sunday with an interview in the Journal du Dimanche newspaper. Muck-racking against mainstream candidates could end up propelling Le Pen into power, he said. “If we continue to try to destroy credible candidates in the presidential election, this is how it’ll end,” Fillon told the paper.
It was the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine that threw his campaign off track last week. Its report said his wife had received a total of around 600,000 euros ($640,000) for employment by him and his successor in parliament, and later as a literary reviewer for a cultural journal. Fillon has not denied the figures, but he has denied the jobs were fake, saying his wife for years proof-read his speeches and prepared press reviews. He has said he would not give up his presidential bid unless he was himself put under formal investigation. — Reuters
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
