Socialist defections boost France's Macron in election race
Reuters
Published Mar 23, 2017 01:22PM ET
Socialist defections boost France's Macron in election race
By Brian Love and Michel Rose
PARIS (Reuters) - Two members of France's Socialist government deserted their party's presidential challenger on Thursday and threw their support behind Emmanuel Macron, bolstering the 39-year-old centrist's bid for the Elysee.
The biggest catch for Macron was the defection of Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, a Socialist Party grandee who has been a close ally and friend of outgoing President Francois Hollande for nearly 40 years.
The Socialist Party candidate, Benoit Hamon, who faces poor poll ratings and the prospect of crashing out in the first round, accused Le Drian of short-changing his own voters.
"In democracies, it is not acceptable that politicians only honor the will of those who elected them when it suits," Hamon said in a statement.
Earlier this week, some senior members of the Socialist Party criticized former prime minister Manuel Valls for failing to publicly back Hamon, who beat him to the party nomination.
Macron, a political novice who has never held elected office, has gatecrashed the leadership contest with a pledge to transcend the long-established divide of Left-versus-Right politics with a program for cross-partisan government. He welcomed the support of Le Drian.
"I'm always happy when men and women of conviction join us and as regards Jean-Yves Le Drian, he's a politician for whom I have much respect," Macron told reporters in Dijon in eastern France, where he was campaigning.
In a sign of Macron's growing popularity, the daily Ifop-Fiducial poll for the first time on Thursday showed Macron winning both the first round on April 23 and the decisive run-off vote. A Harris Interactive survey published earlier in the day showed the same outcome.
In the Harris Interactive poll, Hamon slipped to fifth place.
The second Socialist defection on Thursday was that of Thierry Braillard, a junior sports minister. Another junior minister, Barbara Pompili, also switched allegiance to Macron this week.
LEFT AND RIGHT
Hollande, France's first president not to seek re-election since the introduction of universal suffrage in 1962, had appealed to ministers to refrain at least until the end of this week from taking pre-election positions.
The support of Le Drian, a respected voice on security matters and foreign affairs will be welcome news for Macron, a youthful former economy minister, who has been criticized by opponents for lacking experience in these areas.
Macron also won support from the other side of the political divide. Philippe Douste-Blazy, a right-wing former minister for health and foreign affairs, told Marianne magazine he would back him. Dominique Perben, a right-winger who was minister for justice and transport in the past, did likewise on Wednesday.
Get The News You Want
The campaign has been dominated by judicial inquiries into two major candidates -- Francois Fillon, a conservative former prime minister who was frontrunner until he was engulfed by allegations of financial wrongdoing, and Le Pen over European Parliament funds she paid to her bodyguard and chief secretary.
Fillon, an advocate of Thatcherite policies, now faces elimination in the first round after the scandal surrounding payments of public funds to his wife and children for fake work knocked his bid off course, polls show.
He, like Le Pen, denies any wrongdoing but both are under official investigation.
Written By: Reuters
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