‘I will put France in order’ Le Pen urges anti-Macron voters to back her

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen promised Sunday to put France in order if elected president, after election projections showed she had qualified for a run-off vote against President Emmanuel Macron on April 24.

Published: 10 April 2022 22:15 CEST

'I will put France in order' Le Pen urges anti-Macron voters to back her

French far-right party Rassemblement National (RN) presidential candidate Marine Le Pen addresses party supporters after the first results of the first round of the Presidential election in Paris, on April 10, 2022. (Photo by Thomas SAMSON / AFP)

“I will put France in order within five years,” she told supporters, urging “all those who did not vote for Emmanuel Macron” in the first round to back her in the second.

Le Pen was set to score over 24 percent of the first round vote, according to projections, an improvement on the 21.3 percent she achieved in the first round of the 2017 presidential election.

However with a projected 28 percent of the vote Emmanuel Macron also improved on his 2017 first round score of 24 percent.

But whilst Le Pen was up against it in 2017, the far right candidate is clearly more confident this time around, believing she can unite voters who don’t want to see another five years of Macron.

Macron 28.5% on partial results, Le Pen 24.2%, through to the second round. Here’s the scene at Le Pen’s election night party right now. Her supporters are absolutely jubilant pic.twitter.com/bFxN2ung1C

— Katy Lee (@kjalee) April 10, 2022

In a speech to supporters, she said that the country faced a choice: “Either division, injustice and disorder, or rallying around social justice”.

Le Pen touched on key themes she has addressed throughout the campaign: immigration, security and purchasing power.

“The French people have given me the honour of qualifying me for the second round. The French people obviously want to now decide between two opposing visions of the future”, said the National Rally candidate.

Her cheering supporters chanted “we’re going to win.”

Le Pen’s second round percentage, when combined with those of Éric Zemmour and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan marks a historic moment in French politics. It is the first time that the far-right have secured more than a third of the first-round vote under the Fifth Republic.

The final-round duel between Macron and Le Pen is expected to be tighter than the run-off between them in 2017, when the current president thrashed Le Pen with 66 percent of the vote.

Le Pen, bidding to be France’s first ever woman president, looked on course for a higher first-round score than in 2017 when she won 21.3 percent, and she will be able to pick up most of Zemmour’s votes in the second round.

An IFOP survey, conducted immediately after provisional results were published, projects Le Pen obtaining 49 percent of the vote in the second round, narrowly missing out on power.

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The far-right Rassemblement National (RN) is currently far ahead in opinion polls for the June 9th elections in France, with Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance party in a battle for second place with the Socialists.

The debate between Attal, 35, and Bardella, 28, who leads the RN’s list in the EU elections, will be the first head-to-head clash between the two leading figures in a new French political generation.

Polls have been making increasingly uncomfortable reading for Macron, who has had to fly to the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia to try to calm the violent unrest there.

Coming third would be a disaster for the president, who portrays himself as a champion of European democracy and bulwark against the far right.

The head of Macron’s party list for the elections, the little known Valérie Heyer, has failed to make an impact and was widely seen as losing a debate with Bardella earlier this month.

According to a Toluna-Harris Interactive study for French media, the presidential camp is stuck at just 15 percent of the vote and in a dogfight for second place with the Socialists – who are on 14.5 percent – led by former commentator Raphael Glucksmann.

The RN, by contrast, is soaring ahead on 31.5 percent.

The RN’s figurehead Marine Le Pen, who has waged three unsuccessful presidential campaigns, has sought to bring the RN into the political mainstream as she eyes another tilt at the presidency in 2027.

“There is a very clear signal that must be sent to Emmanuel Macron. He must suffer the worst possible defeat to bring him back to earth,” Le Pen told CNews and Europe 1 this week.

Bardella, who took over the party leadership from his mentor, is key to Le Pen’s strategy, a gifted communicator of immigrant origin with an expanding following on TikTok.

Attal, also one of the best debaters in Macron’s government, is expected to seek to portray Bardella as an extremist, complacent over the threat posed by Russia and who has little interest in Europe.

Apparently aware of the danger, Bardella on Tuesday said the RN will no longer sit in the EU parliament with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) faction, indicating it had lost patience with the controversies surrounding its German allies.

The head of the AfD’s list in the polls, Maximilian Krah, had said in a weekend interview that someone who had been a member of the SS in Nazi Germany was “not automatically a criminal”.

Bardella is “putting his credibility and the future of his movement on the line in the debate”, said the Le Monde daily, adding that a strong performance could see some RN supporters regard him as a stronger candidate in 2027 than Le Pen.

You can find a more detailed profile of Attal HERE and a look at Bardella HERE