High alert in France: Protesters march against Le Pen; Euro fuss

Finals

France’s most crucial election in decades entered its final week.

Emmanuel Macron and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen traded campaign blows across Paris on May Day.

The vote in the world’s fifth largest economy, a key member of the NATO defense alliance, will be the first to elect a president who is from neither of the main political groupings. The candidates of the Socialists and conservative party The Republicans were knocked out in the first round on April 23.

Between them Le Pen and Macron gathered only 45 percent of votes in that round, which eliminated nine other candidates.

Second round of the elections is taking place in the middle of a weekend extended by a public holiday. That has fed speculation that a high abstention rate could favor Le Pen, whose supporters typically tell pollsters they are staunchly committed to their candidate.

May Day speeches

Firstly, Macron looked for a third successive day to picture National Front candidate Le Pen as an extremist. While she portrayed him as a clone of unpopular outgoing Socialist President Francois Hollande, under whom he served as economy minister from 2014 to 2016.

Secondly, the latest opinion poll showed Macron leading Le Pen by 61 percent to 39 ahead of Sunday’s election. Which offers France a choice between his vision of closer integration with a modernized European Union, and her calls to cut immigration and take the country out of the euro.

“I will fight up until the very last second. Not only against her program, but also her idea of what constitutes democracy and the French Republic.”

Thirdly, He was speaking after paying tribute to a young Moroccan man who drowned in the River Seine in Paris 22 years ago after he was pushed into the water by skinheads on a May Day rally by the FN. (Then led by Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie.)

Since beginning of candidature, she has worked hard to cleanse xenophobic and anti-semitic associations related to her. She said at the weekend she had no more contact with her father. And is not responsible for his ‘unacceptable comments’.

Campaigning in Villepinte, Marine Le Pen told a rally:

“Emmanuel Macron is just Francois Hollande who wants to stay and who is hanging on to power like a barnacle.”

Divided France

Following, Le Pen’s father gave his own traditional May Day speech at a statue of French medieval heroine Joan of Arc. Just a few hundred meters from where Macron commemorated the death of young Moroccan Brahim Bouarram.

“Emmanuel Macron is doing a tour of graveyards. It’s a bad sign for him,” he said.

The bitterly contested election has polarized France. Exposing some of the same sense of anger with globalization and political elites that brought Donald Trump to presidential power in the United States, and caused Britons to vote for a divorce from the EU.

Euro fuss

In recent days,  Le Pen has sought to play down the importance of an exit from the euro – the part of her campaign platform that is the least popular with voters.

In conclusion, in her speech lasting nearly an hour Today, she made no reference to the single currency. While devoting most of it to slamming her centrist rival and billing him as the candidate of the establishment.

“I want France to get its independence back by negotiating with Brussels the return of our sovereignty.”

Also, referring to her plan to hold a referendum on whether France should remain in the EU, she said: “The French people will decide.”

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Protesters Masks:

Protesters wearing masks of French presidential candidates. Emmanuel Macron (L) and Marine Le Pen depicted as the Grim Reaper lead a march marking the annual May Day workers’ rally in Marseille, southern France, on May 1, 2017. (Photo Source: CNBC)