A new chapter opened in France’s closely contested presidential election campaign yesterday as Socialists voted to choose their champion and conservatives fought to keep their scandal-hit campaign on track.
Polling opened at 0800 GMT in a primary run-off that pits pro-business former prime minister Manuel Valls against hard-left lawmaker Benoit Hamon for the Socialist ticket.
A result was expected by the end of the day.
Meanwhile, Francois Fillon – chosen as conservative candidate last year by his party The Republicans but hurt last week by a newspaper claim that his wife was paid for fake work – held a rally on the outskirts of Paris.
Hamon is favourite to beat Valls in the Socialist primary’s head-to-head vote, even though the outcome remains uncertain given that any voter can take part.
By midday, the high turnout Valls has been calling for looked likely, with more than half a million people taking part by midday, according to the organisers, up from around 400,000 in last week’s first round.
Neither man has much chance of winning the presidential race itself, though, after five years of unpopular Socialist rule.
Until Fillon tripped up over his British wife Penelope’s pay, prompting the opening of an official inquiry into the matter, he was favourite to move into the Elysee presidential palace.
Opinion polls showed him beating far-right National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen in a run-off vote on May 7 with a comfortable two-thirds of the vote.
Popularity polls since have shown his rating slip slightly, although there have been no polls on voting intentions since the scandal broke.
Whichever Socialist wins, opinion polls show the party destined for a humiliating fifth place in the April 23 first round of the election itself, behind Fillon, Le Pen, centrist Emmanuel Macron, and the far left’s Jean-Luc Melenchon.
Nevertheless, the poll outcome is important to the election, and for the future of the Socialist party, unpopular after five years of high unemployment under President Francois Hollande and split by a pro-business policy u-turn that angered its left-wingers.
Hamon is one of those left-wingers.
He wants to give a “universal income” to all citizens at a cost of €350bn and impose a tax on robots.
Analysts say that if he wins the ticket, that would boost Macron’s chances of the presidency, potentially pushing Valls’ centre-left pro-business supporters into former investment banker Macron’s arms.
It could also hasten a break-up of the Socialist party, analysts say.
Macron, Valls’ economy minister until he resigned last year to launch his own presidential campaign, has spurned the Socialist primaries and is standing instead for his own centrist political movement.
The latest polls show him breathing down the necks of Fillon and Le Pen.
Yesterday Fillon sought to get his campaign back on track with an interview in the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.
Muck-racking against mainstream candidates could end up propelling Le Pen into power, he said.
“If we continue to try to destroy credible candidates in the presidential election, this is how it’ll end,” Fillon told the paper.
It was the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine that threw his campaign off track last week.
Its report said Fillon’s wife had received a total of around €600,000 ($640,000) for employment by him and his successor in parliament, and later as a literary reviewer for a cultural journal.
Fillon, who says that as president he would slash public sector jobs and tax on companies, has not denied the figures, but he has denied the jobs were fake, saying that his wife for years proof-read his speeches and prepared press reviews.
He has said he would not give up his presidential bid unless he was himself put under formal investigation.
It is unclear who would replace him in that case.
Last week, investigators searched the headquarters of the cultural journal that employed Penelope Fillon.
They also seized files on Francois Fillon held by France’s official anti-corruption watchdog.
At the campaign rally yesterday, a crowd of several thousand supporters gave Fillon and his wife a standing ovation as the couple arrived.
Though it is legal in France for parliamentarians to employ family members, financial prosecutors have opened an investigation into suspected misuse of public funds.
The affair has dented a wholesome image that Fillon, 62, a devout Catholic with 30 scandal-free years in politics, has sought to project.
An opinion survey on Friday suggested it might be harming Fillon’s popularity but supporters at the rally dismissed its impact.
“They all do the same anyway, so why target him?” said 74-year-old Danielle Cambournac, referring to the fact that French lawmakers are given a set amount of money to spend on their parliamentary assistants.
“I really don’t mind, he spends the money (given to lawmakers) as he likes. And nothing’s been proven,” 70-year-old Francoise Desenfants said.
Aides to Fillon said there were more than 13,000 supporters at the rally.
Continuing with the event, which was planned long before the allegations were published, is meant to show that supporters are not discouraged by the scandal, one aide said.
Speaking at the rally, Fillon said his critics should “leave my wife out” of the election.
“If someone wants to attack me they should attack me straight on, but leave my wife out of this political debate,” he said.
“I want to tell Penelope that I love her and that I will never forgive those who tried to throw us to the wolves,” he told the crowd, to chants of “Penelope, Penelope!”
“They’re trying to take me down, through Penelope,” he told the crowd of mostly older, white supporters in a Paris hall, who interrupted his speech periodically with shouts of “Fillon, President!”




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