The centrist leader Emmanuel Macron and his rival in the presidential election, the far-right Marine Le Pen, seek this Wednesday in their only debate to convince millions of French abstentionists and attract left-wing voters, four days before the ballot.
(Read: Macron and Le Pen will dispute the second round for the presidency of France)
The main axes of the debate will be: purchasing power, security, youth, international politics, environmentamong others.
(He is interested in: The far-right Le Pen is on Macron’s heels in France)
The keys of the debate
Macron accused his far-right rival Marine Le Pen in the presidential election on Wednesday of “depending on Russian power” and President Vladimir Putin.. “You depend on Russian power and Mr. Putin (…) You talk to your banker when he talks about Russia,” said the current president.
“It’s not true and it’s quite dishonest,” replied the candidate for the National Association (RN), who stated that no French bank had granted her a loan and that she had “no other dependency than to repay it.”
On other issues, both also clashed over their proposals to defend the purchasing power of the French, damaged in recent months by rising energy prices and the consequences of the war in Ukraine.
Le Pen intervened first, defending his proposals to lower “perennially” VAT on all energy sources from 20 to 5.5%, and said that between that and other measures it could increase the net income of households by an average of 150 to 200 euros. L
The far-right leader pointed out that he would compensate for the decrease in income in the public coffers, which he estimated at around 12,000 million euros, with a cut in unnecessary expenses and that this would allow each household to earn between 150 and 200 euros per month.
The outgoing president defended the measures already taken by his government to block gas and electricity prices, but stressed that the VAT cut would promote consumption “of fossil energies that must be imported”.
How is the presidential race going?
Although Macron leads Le Pen by 12 points, according to the latest barometer of Ipsos/Sopra SteriaOnly 69 percent of French people say they are sure they will vote, including about 6 in 10 voters for leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
“There is a third of the electorate that feels orphaned, who are the voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and from the left in general, who in fact oppose both Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen,” Kantar political scientist Emmanuel Rivière said on RFI radio.
A sign of the disenchantment of a part of the population forced to choose between the far-right “danger” and the unpopular president, the slogan “Neither Macron nor Le Pen” resounded last week in a symbolic Sorbonne occupied by students.
The face-to-face of the candidates of the final duel is announced as key, since that part of the electorate will look at it “in the hope” of “confirming an election that is not entirely safe” or that it will help them finally make a decision according to Riviere.
The 53-year-old National Group (RN) candidate must break the favorable trend of her 44-year-old rival from La República en Marcha (LREM), who agitates, as in 2017 – when she already defeated Le Pen – , the fear of the arrival of the extreme right to power.
The 2017 debate represented a debacle for the far-right, who was criticized for his “aggressiveness” and “his lack of preparation”. Days later, he acknowledged a “strategic error,” a mea culpa that he reiterated in the current campaign.
As was the case with his father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2002, the majority of defeated candidates, as well as artists, athletes or former presidents, called to vote for the current liberal president or against the heiress of the National Front (FN).
The presidential candidate has made an effort to show a less radical image and appear as the defender of purchasing power in the first round. But the fears returned when her focus was on her government and international program in the final stretch.
Le Pen, seen as close to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, proposes to leave NATO’s integrated command, which sets the Alliance’s military strategy, and her election would deal another setback to the European Union after the re-election of Hungarian Viktor Orban.
Pandemic and war in Ukraine mark the elections in France
Unlike 2017, when with 66.1 percent of the votes he was proclaimed president for the first time, Macron must now defend his management, marked by crises: social protests, coronavirus pandemic, consequences of the war in Ukraine.
The ‘leitmotif’ of his program is to recover the reformist and liberal impulse that the crises forced him to park, such as delaying the retirement age from 62 to 65 years. To appeal to leftist voters, he said he was willing to delay her only until she was 64.
Le Pen took advantage of this unpopular proposal and the concern of the French with the increase in inflation to seek to reinforce Macron’s image as “president of the rich”, which galvanized the social protest of the “yellow vests” in 2018 and 2019.
According to the barometer of Ipsos/Sopra Steria, about half of French people consider both candidates to be “too authoritarian”. Le Pen is considered the one who best understands the problems of the people and Macron, as the one with the best international image.
On Sunday night, the name of who will preside over France for the next five years will be known and the June legislative campaign will begin, which will define with which parliamentary majority it will govern, something uncertain in a political board in recomposition.
The leftist Mélenchonwhich with 22% stayed at the gates of the ballot, he already urged the French on Tuesday to make him “prime minister” during the “third round” of the presidential election, that is, in the legislative elections on June 12 and 19.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from AFP
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