PARIS: French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who has narrowed the gap with Emmanuel Macron in opinion polls ahead of Sunday’s presidential election enough to rattle financial markets, sought on Tuesday to further detoxify her image.
Macron, meanwhile, went on a walkabout in a small town in northwestern France, shaking hands, hugging people and beaming to crowds shouting “Macron President!”, as he seeks to revive a lacklustre campaign which he started much later than his rival.
Le Pen, whom Macron easily beat with two-thirds of the vote five years ago, has got so close that who will win in a likely run-off on April 24 is now within the margin of error, one opinion poll showed on Monday.
Since her resounding 2017 defeat, Le Pen has patiently worked on softening her image, striving to appear as a potential leader rather than a radical anti-system opponent.
Polls show this has worked on a growing number of voters, with a survey saying the once vilified candidate has become the second most-liked politician in the country, something long thought impossible in France.
“I always try to have the most reasonable view possible, and one that defends the interest of France,” Le Pen said in an interview with France Inter radio, spelling out her views on topics ranging from foreign policy to climate change.
But France’s benchmark CAC-40 index abruptly lost ground on Tuesday, with traders citing election nerves, while the spread between French and German 10-year government bonds stood at its widest in two years.
“Markets woke up on Le Pen,” said Jerome Legras, head of research at Axiom Alternative Investments.
Le Pen has continued to improve on her pre-first round polling, at 23pc vs Macron’s 27pc, a poll by OpinionWay and Ka Partners for the Les Echos daily and Radio Classique showed.
The poll also showed 59pc of those surveyed expected Macron to win a second mandate — which opinion polls all still point to as the most likely scenario.
After people in Macron’s own camp worried over his late campaign start and with Le Pen’s ratings boosted by months of canvassing small constituencies, the president spent hours talking with voters in the Brittany town of Spezet’s main square, taking selfies amid cheers and a handful of boos.
“You can count on me ... on my determination. I will, in the coming days and weeks seek out, one by one, the confidence of our compatriots, to (have the mandate to continue) to act in the years to come for our country, for Europe,” he said.
Macron focused a half-hour speech, squeezed between two walkabouts, on how crucial Europe was for France — and criticised, without naming her, Le Pen’s lingering euroscepticsm, stressing his own experience as a statesman.
“Projects that turn their backs on Europe are harmful and deadly ... for our future,” he said, concluding with a resounding: “Vive la France, et vive l’Europe!” While she has ditched plans to leave the euro or the EU, which had put off many voters from backing her in past elections, Le Pen has kept a eurosceptic stance, with plans to hollow out the EU by giving preeminence to French law, and replace the bloc with a “European Alliance of Nations”.
Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2022
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