France’s presidential rivals scrambled to seduce nearly a fifth of the electorate that voted for far right anti-immigration crusader Marine Le Pen, voicing sympathy for voters’ distress in the economic crisis.
Conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy, fighting for his political life after being beaten into second place in Sunday’s first round, declared that no issues were taboo and hammered away at rallies and in interviews on Le Pen’s themes of fear of immigration, insecurity, Islam and unregulated trade.
His Socialist rival, Francois Hollande, who topped the poll and is favourite to win a May 6 runoff against Sarkozy, said National Front voters had expressed «social anger» and vowed to defend them from «financial globalisation and a failing Europe».
A cartoon in the daily Le Monde parodying Romeo and Juliette depicted Hollande and Sarkozy stabbing each other in the back while offering bouquets in French national colours and serenading Le Pen voters looking down from a balcony.
«Do you know these guys?» one hard-hatted Le Pen supporter in overalls asks. «Never seen them before,» his mate replies.
The first opinion poll to be taken since Sunday’s first round by the Ifop institute showed Hollande 10 points ahead of Sarkozy with 55 percent of voting intentions for the runoff.
Sarkozy used each campaign stop to address Le Pen’s six million voters while accusing the left of talking down to them.
«I want to talk to the little people, to the foot soldiers, to people in the countryside, to pensioners,» the president told one rally, saying the National Front leader had drawn a «crisis vote» in «the part of France that is suffering».
«You are feeling afraid,» Sarkozy said, calling Le Pen’s record 18 percent score a wake-up call. «There is nothing reprehensible about this vote,» he added.
While describing himself as a secular republican, he invoked the heritage of the French monarchy and the Roman Catholic church in a play for nationalist votes.
Hollande ascribed Le Pen’s unprecedented score to despair among «a suffering electorate of office workers, artisans, and blue-collar workers who are really feeling abandoned», as well as farmers struggling to make ends meet.
Those voters, some of whom came from the left, had wanted to punish not just Sarkozy but also the political system, Europe and globalisation, he said.
The two rivals for the second round, which will determine who leads Europe’s number two economy, a nuclear power and an activist U.N. Security Council member, are adopting sharply contrasting tactics to woo potential swing voters.
buenosairesherald.com