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2022 FRENCH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Macron holds first rally as France election race tightens

President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday holds his first rally of the French election campaign, with far-right rival Marine Le Pen eating into what once seemed his unassailable lead barely a week ahead of the ballot.

Published: 2 April 2022 10:36 CEST
Updated: 2 April 2022 13:10 CEST

French incumbent president Emmanuel Macron

French incumbent president and candidate of La Republique en Marche (LREM) party for the presidential election Emmanuel Macron. Ludovic MARIN / AFP

The centrist Macron threw his hat into the election ring at the last moment and has been distracted by the war in Ukraine, conducting diplomacy from the Elysee while Le Pen paces the country to discuss basic issues, including purchasing power.

With the first round of elections on April 10 — followed by a run-off on April 24 — polls have shown Le Pen comfortably in second place in the initial stage and narrowing the gap on Macron for round two.

Macron’s 1230 GMT rally before an expected crowd of 35,000 at the indoor La Defense Arena stadium — a vast venue that usually hosts top-level rugby and rock concerts — represents a pivotal chance for the president to regain momentum.

He will make his appearance more “physical” than traditional rallies, according to his campaign team, requiring an “energetic presence” on stage.

He will address his supporters for an hour or more, it said.

The latest Elabe poll published Saturday showed Le Pen garnering 47 percent of the vote in a second-round run-off against Macron, who was projected to win 53 percent.

Allowing for a margin of error in the poll, this could put Le Pen in the zone to snatch victory.

“Of course Marine Le Pen can win,” Macron’s former prime minister Edouard Philippe warned in an interview with the Le Parisien daily posted online Thursday.

Philippe, who is backing Macron, added that “if she wins, believe me, things will be seriously different for the country… Her programme is dangerous.”

‘Possible to defeat Macron’
Le Pen, who lost to Macron in the 2017 polls run-off, has sought to moderate her image in the last half decade in a process helped by the emergence of Eric Zemmour as a fellow candidate in the far-right.

While Zemmour risks taking votes from Le Pen in the first round, his more radical stances in immigration and Islam have helped her project a more mainstream image.

“We feel it on the ground, there is a great dynamic, a hope that is emerging as the campaign nears it end,” she said on a visit to eastern France Friday.

“What people said was the automatic re-election of Emmanuel Macron turned out to be fake news. It is perfectly possible to defeat Emmanuel Macron and radically change the politics of this country,” she added.

Sarkozy snub?
But the first round risks being a disaster for The Republicans — the traditional right-wing party that was the political home of ex-presidents such as Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac.

Their candidate Valerie Pecresse is projected by most polls to be vying with Zemmour for fourth place after failing to find momentum in the campaign.

Her big chance to ignite her bid will be at a rally Sunday in southern Paris. But the Le Parisien daily reported that Sarkozy — whose support is still coveted by the right despite criminal convictions — would be staying away in a major snub to her campaign.

The Socialist candidate, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, is struggling to reach beyond low single figures while the Greens hopeful Yannick Jadot has failed to put the environment at the centre stage of the campaign.

The left’s main hope is the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon who most polls project coming in third place but believes he has a chance of making a run-off.

Melenchon, one of the most explosive orators in French politics, will address an open air meeting in Place de Capitole in the centre of the southern French city of Toulouse on Sunday.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.