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Post by Admin on Apr 29, 2017 18:58:31 GMT
The far-right leader Marine Le Pen faces an uphill battle in France’s presidential runoff, less than two weeks away. But she saw daylight through a small window on Tuesday, and from an unlikely source: her defeated counterpart on the far left. Alone among all of France’s major political personalities, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of his own “France Unsubjugated” movement, who finished a strong fourth in Sunday’s voting, has refused to endorse Ms. Le Pen’s opponent, the former economy minister Emmanuel Macron. Mr. Mélenchon’s critics say his obstinacy is petulant, wounded pride that can only help Ms. Le Pen’s National Front. But it also speaks to the passions that Mr. Macron, a seemingly mild-mannered centrist, provokes in large parts of the French electorate, far left and far right, who share a view of the 39-year-old former investment banker as a fire-breathing incarnation of evil market culture.
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Post by Admin on May 4, 2017 18:57:56 GMT
Centrist Emmanuel Macron has pulled ahead of right-wing populist Marine Le Pen in a snap poll following a fiery TV debate Wednesday night. More than 60 per cent of viewers found Mr. Macron more convincing than Ms. Le Pen in the debate, according to an opinion poll by Elabe for BFMTV. Around 34 per cent, meanwhile, said the arguments of Ms. Le Pen were more persuasive. The former Front National leader has defied post-debate polls in the past, however. In a survey by the same company after last month’s debate with all the first round candidates, Ms. Le Pen received the smallest share of support for her vision for France, coming behind “anti-capitalist” Jean-Luc Melénchon and scandal-hit conservative François Fillon.
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Post by Admin on May 6, 2017 18:20:55 GMT
The campaign of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron says it has been the target of a "massive hacking attack" after a trove of documents was released online. The campaign said that genuine files were mixed up with fake ones in order to confuse people. It said that it was clear the hackers wanted to undermine Mr Macron ahead of Sunday's second round vote. The centrist will face off against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. The documents were leaked on a file sharing website late on Friday, as the official presidential campaigning period drew to a close.
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Post by Admin on May 7, 2017 18:27:43 GMT
A win by the leader of the French far right would see a leading European nation select a president emphatically opposed to globalization and integration, friendly to authoritarian Russia and tethered to a party, the National Front, that is steeped in a history of neo-fascism, extremism and bigotry. It could prefigure the dissolution of the European Union, trigger new economic chaos and hammer home the last nail in the coffin of an already ailing liberal order. A Le Pen victory “means the collapse of the E.U., because the E.U. without France doesn’t make any sense,” Gerard Araud, France’s ambassador in Washington, said in a conversation with Today’s WorldView earlier this year. “And it means the collapse of the euro and a financial crisis, which will have consequences throughout the world.” It’s still an unlikely outcome. Polls place Macron ahead of Le Pen by roughly 20 points with just a few days to go. Most observers thought he was the clear victor in an ill-tempered Wednesday night debate. But Macron’s supporters — and anyone who seeks the preservation of the European project — have good reason to feel jittery.
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Post by Admin on May 8, 2017 18:31:46 GMT
Macron, 39, a former economy minister who ran as a “neither left nor right” independent promising to shake up the French political system, took 65.1% to Le Pen’s 34.9%, according to initial projections from early counts. “A new chapter in our long history has opened this evening,” Macron said in a statement. “I would like it to be one of hope and of confidence rediscovered.” But Le Pen’s score nonetheless marked a historic high for the French far right. Despite a lacklustre campaign that ended with a calamitous performance in the final TV debate, she was projected to have taken 11 million votes, double that of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, when he reached the presidential run-off in 2002. The anti-immigration, anti-EU Front National’s supporters asserted that the party has a central place as an opposition force in France. Macron, who has never held elected office and was unknown until three years ago, is France’s youngest president. He will next Sunday take over a country under a state of emergency, still facing a major terrorism threat and struggling with a stagnant economy after decades of mass unemployment. France is also divided after an election campaign in which anti-establishment anger saw the traditional left and right ruling parties ejected from the race in the first round for the first time since the period after the second world war.
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