Parties in France unite against Le Pen

PARIS — A day after mainstream parties were dealt a heavy defeat in the French presidential election, far-right leader Marine Le Pen, one of the two candidates to advance to a runoff, condemned the parties’ calls to unite against her and support her rival, independent centrist Emmanuel Macron.

Ms Le Pen’s statement on Monday (April 24) denouncing “the old and completely rotten Republican Front” — the coalition of mainstream parties allied against her — sums up her challenge in the May 7 runoff. So far, not a single rival party has called for its voters to support Ms Le Pen. And she has no plausible major reservoir of votes to add to the 21.3 per cent she received in the first round of voting, though she is expected to gain some voters from defeated center-right candidate Franois Fillon.

Perhaps in an effort to broaden her appeal to voters from outside the far-right National Front’s traditional constituencies, Ms Le Pen announced on Twitter on Monday that she was temporarily stepping down as the party’s leader so she could run as a candidate for “all the French”.

“Tonight, I am not the president of the National Front, I am the presidential candidate, the one who wants to gather all the French around a project of hope, of prosperity, of security,” she said in an interview on French television.

Most of Ms Le Pen’s rivals have gathered around the effort to defeat her. Only one major candidate has resisted calls to unite against her: Mr Jean-Luc Mlenchon, the firebrand hard-left candidate who came in fourth and who has pointedly refused to support Mr Macron, saying instead that he would seek the opinion of his supporters through his website. Similarly, traditionalist Roman Catholic organisations that backed Mr Fillon refused to endorse Mr Macron on Monday.

Some of Ms Le Pen’s advisers said, in interviews with French media Monday, that they were hoping to lure some of the supporters of the defeated Mlenchon.

Stock markets opened higher Monday across Europe, a sign that investors were relieved by Mr Macron’s strong showing.

Polls released Monday showed that about 60 per cent of voters supported Macron, compared with less than 40 per cent for Ms Le Pen. THE NEW YORK TIMES