Former PMs in race for center-right nomination
Print Edition
TWO former prime ministers went head-to-head yesterday in a runoff vote for France’s center-right presidential nomination, with the victor expected to face a showdown against a resurgent far-right in May.
The winner, either Francois Fillon or Alain Juppe, will most likely represent the entire French political mainstream against the National Front’s Marine Le Pen, in another test of the anti-establishment anger in Western countries that saw Britain vote to leave the EU and Americans elect Donald Trump as president.
Opinion polls show Fillon, a social conservative with a deep attachment to France’s Catholic roots, as the clear favorite after stunning his more centrist challenger with a surge in support just before the November 20 party nomination first round.
Voting opened at more than 10,000 polling stations across France at 8am and was set to close at 7pm, with the first results likely up to an hour and a half later.
Organizers from the center-right party, which took the name Les Republicains last year, said that by midday the participation rate was 10 to 15 percent higher than in last week’s first round.
A 62-year-old racing car enthusiast who lives in a Loire valley chateau, Fillon promises radical reforms to France’s regulation-encumbered economy, vowing to roll back the state and slash government’s bloated costs.
Scrambling to regain momentum, Juppe, 71, a soft-mannered moderate who is now mayor of Bordeaux, has attacked the “brutality” of his rival’s reform program and says the Paris lawmaker lacks credibility. But in a blow to Juppe, television viewers found the harder-line Fillon more convincing in a head-to-head debate on Thursday.
“He’s not ashamed of being on the right, and even less of being Catholic,” Fillon backer Valerie Sonnard, a childminder in her forties, said at a polling station in Toulouse yesterday.
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