by Ruadhan MacCormaic
The Irish Times
April 20, 2012
The "far-right" leader claims she will win the National Front its highest score in history, writes in Paris
Leader Marine Le Pen has predicted she will cause an upset in the first round of the presidential election on Sunday by winning the National Front its highest score in history.
Le Pen, who is credited with 14 to 17 per cent in opinion polls, said she aimed to surpass the 16.7 per cent her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, achieved in 2002, a result that secured him a place in the run-off against the eventual winner, Jacques Chirac.
“Sarkozy has no chance of winning. He knows it himself,” Le Pen said, telling right-wing voters that opting for the incumbent would be a wasted vote.
Even if she does not qualify for the run-off, a prospect that has grown more remote in recent weeks, Le Pen hopes to use the presidential race to gain momentum for legislative elections in June.
At a rally in Paris on Tuesday night, Le Pen was cheered wildly as she hit out at banks, the EU
and immigration. “We will not abandon our fates to these stupid technocrats,” she said, referring to EU officials and her plan to withdraw France from the euro.
“I am the only candidate of the nation.”
“This is our home,” the audience shouted back.
Le Pen has attempted to refashion the front’s image since taking over from her father, the party’s founder, last year.
Using left-wing language, she has positioned herself as a critic of globalisation and a champion of protectionism and workers’ rights, and until recently gave less prominence to attacks on immigration and crime.
“I am in favour of redrawing political life to move away from the left/right division, which I find old-fashioned and artificial, towards a division between those who believe in France, in the nation state, and those who no longer believe in the nation state,” Le Pen said.
The gap between Le Pen and French president Nicolas Sarkozy has widened from as little as one percentage point in January to more than 10 points today.
Barring an upset, her focus now is on securing third place ahead of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a far-left candidate whose rapid rise in the polls, from 7 per cent to 14 per cent, has been the surprise of the campaign.
Despite insisting in public that the contest is still wide open, there have been signs of growing despondency in the Sarkozy camp.
The pro-government Le Figaro put the incumbent’s recent dip in support down to “apparent hesitation” between hard-right and centrist strategies.
In a departure from its usual editorial line, the paper noted Sarkozy’s mantra that “there will be surprises” but said his “heart wasn’t really in it”.
A number of former Sarkozy allies from the right and left have declared this week that they will vote for Socialist François Hollande. They include Martin Hirsch and Fadela Amara, two of Sarkozy’s ministerial recruits from the left, and three former centre-right Chirac-era ministers, Azouz Begag, Corinne Lepage and Brigitte Girardin.
