Paris | Tuesday
PROTESTS swelled in France on Tuesday as far-right challenger Jean-Marie Le Pen began campaigning against incumbent conservative Jacques Chirac for next month’s presidential run-off, insisting he stood a strong chance of winning.
Thousands of high school students took to the streets in the cities of Montpellier, Le Havre, Rouen, Montauban and Toulon in a repeat of the vociferous protests Monday against Le Pen’s weekend electoral breakthrough.
The 73-year-old head of the anti-immigration National Front party (FN) stunned France when he won 16,86% of the vote in the first round of the presidential race, qualifying for the run-off against incumbent conservative Jacques Chirac on May 5.
His unprecedented triumph — which forced Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin out of the election — was condemned across the political spectrum, and has provoked a nationwide series of protests, some of which have ended in violence.
In the Bastille quarter of central Paris overnight on Monday 14 people were taken into detention after riot police confronted a group of protesters who threw firebombs and bottles and smashed shop windows. Police said 13 officers were slightly hurt in the clashes.
Le Pen was in ebullient form Tuesday, challenging Chirac to a face to face television debate and refusing to accept the opinion polls that show he lags behind the president by around 77 percent to 23.
“I can be elected,” he told RTL radio. “I am counting on the French people. I am the candidate of the people against the candidate of the system … I am counting on the millions of French people who think that things are not going well.”
The FN leader also repeated his promise that if elected to restore the French franc and take France out of the “Europe of Maastricht,” which he said was an infringement on French sovereignty and made impossible the reforms the country needs.
“One cannot undertake any kind of reform in France once one has delegated the capacity to do it to another institution outside the French republic. But that is what Chirac has done,” he said.
“Sixty percent of the laws which apply here are not made in France but in Brussels. So the first thing to do is to rediscover the independence of the nation, so that we can carry out ourselves the essential reforms to fight unemployment, immigration, crime and high taxes,” he said.
Among Le Pen’s other manifesto commitments are an end to income tax, the restoration of the death penalty and 200 000 new prison places.
France’s left wing political parties continued to rally round Chirac, some with clear signs of reluctance, in order to ensure he wins a second term on May 5.
After the Socialists, Greens and Communists, the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist League — whose candidate 28-year-old postman Olivier Besancenot won 4,25% on Sunday — urged the French to “mobilise so that Le Pen gets as few votes as possible.”
The support offered by most of the left is useful ammunition to Le Pen, who says he is fighting a political establishment which during five years of “cohabitation” has shown Chirac to be an accomplice in the programme of Jospin and his Socialists.
“Chirac is a man of the left, more dangerous than Jospin.
The mask has fallen. He is the one who the left recognises as their leader for the second round … It is a real Popular Front,” he said, referring to the left-wing coalition that came to power in 1936.
Le Pen also insisted he would only take part in a televised debate with Chirac if it is conducted face-to-face, not what he called “American-style” with the two candidates addressing the camera or a moderator rather than each other.
He said he thought Chirac was afraid of him. “He is the one who has to explain seven years of failure, lies and denials. That’s hard to do against a candidate who is courteous but combative,” he said. – AFP