French rightwing backs Fillon for president
Print Edition
FRANCE’S center-right rallied behind free-market reformist Francois Fillon as its candidate for president yesterday after an opinion poll showed him clear favorite to beat far-right leader Marine Le Pen in an election showdown next year.
Fillon, a former prime minister who vowed to change France’s “software” with an assault on public sector spending, moved one step closer to the Elysee by securing a resounding victory over Alain Juppe in the Les Republicains primary vote on Sunday.
The ruling Socialists, meanwhile, sought to quell talk of a fallout between unpopular President Francois Hollande and his prime minister, Manuel Valls, over which of them should seek the party ticket in their primary set for January.
Opinion polls show, though, that whoever does run for the Left is likely to be a very distant third behind Fillon and the National Front (FN) leader Le Pen in the election’s first round next April.
Fillon, 62, easily saw off Juppe, another former prime minister, by securing two-thirds of the vote on Sunday.
“When a candidate wins with a score of that size — two thirds — it creates a natural momentum, a center of gravity and a unifying force,” Bruno Ratailleau, a Fillon ally, told RTL radio.
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy, whom Fillon ousted in the first round of the conservatives primary, and Juppe had both been given far better odds of winning the ticket at the start.
Both men rallied behind the 62-year-old Fillon after his triumph.
But Fillon’s hard-line reforms plans — cutting public spending by 100 billion euros (US$106 billion) over five years, scrapping a tax on the wealthy and pushing the retirement age to 65 and cutting public sector jobs — hand a glimmer of opportunity to Hollande and his Socialists, and the broader French Left.
His plans also set him apart from the anti-euro, anti-immigration Le Pen’s more pro-worker policies.
By contrast, his socially conservative views such as his deep reservations about abortion and gay marriage could win him votes at her expense in a traditionally Catholic, yet secular, country.
Under the leadership of Le Pen, who took over from her father Jean-Marie in 2011, the FN has switched from an economically liberal, pro-small business party to one that promises to lower the retirement age and guarantee France’s generous welfare safety net.
Fillon, an admirer of late British premier Margaret Thatcher, pledged on Sunday to introduce radical change. “I will take up an unusual challenge for France: tell the truth and completely change its software,” he told supporters.
French voters are angry with unemployment — stubbornly high at 10 percent — and fearful after a wave of Islamist militant attacks.
Next year’s presidentials in the eurozone’s second-largest economy are shaping up to be another test of the strength of anti-establishment parties in western countries after Britain’s vote to quit the European Union and the election of Donald Trump as US president.
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