French president Francois Hollande urges joint effort to halt rise of National Front but unity seems unlikely
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy insists it is ‘not immoral’ for people to vote for the insurgent far-right party and has rejected calls for the Socialists and Republicans to work together.
French President Francois Hollande called on Wednesday for unity following the record showing of the far-right National Front in regional polls, which have left traditional parties divided over how to fight back.
There needs “to be clarity in the behaviour and attitude of all political leaders to defend the values of the Republic,” Hollande said through his spokesman ahead of Sunday’s decisive second round of voting.
French presidents are meant to stay above the fray of party politics, and Hollande’s intervention demonstrated the depth of the crisis gripping the political elite after the National Front (FN) topped polls in the first round last Sunday.
I fight the FN morning, noon and night. The FN attacks me much more than all the others put together
The hypernationalist FN, which wants to pull France out of the euro and end all immigration, took the lead in six of France’s 13 regions.
Any win in the second round would hand the party control of a region for the first time, and act as a springboard for leader Marine Le Pen ahead of the 2017 presidential election.
Hollande’s ruling Socialists and the opposition Republicans led by his predecessor as president, Nicolas Sarkozy, are divided over tactics for the second round.
Sarkozy has rejected calls for the two parties to gang up on the FN, and refused to paint the rise of the far-right in the same cataclysmic tones as the Socialists.
“I fight the FN morning, noon and night. The FN attacks me much more than all the others put together,” Sarkozy told France Inter radio.