PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron and his far-right challenger traded barbs on Monday as they began a final fortnight of campaigning ahead of a run-off vote set to be much closer than their 2017 contest.
After a first round of voting on Sunday, Macron came top with 27.85 percent, while far-right leader Marine Le Pen finished second at 23.15 percent, final results showed on Monday.
As the top two finishers, they advanced to a second round scheduled for April 24.
Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon came close to qualifying for the run-off after a late surge gave him a score of just under 22 percent.
The Macron-Le Pen duel is a replay of the 2017 election final from which Macron emerged victorious with 66 percent. This time, however, polls suggest it will be a closer contest.
Making an aggressive start to the next phase of the campaign, Macron headed to deprived former mining and steel-making areas of northern France that have become Le Pen strongholds.
“I’m not going to pretend nothing happened, I have heard the message from those who voted for the extremes, including those who voted for Ms Le Pen,” Macron told a scrum of journalists who followed him in Denain.
“I realize that people will vote for me to stop her, but I want to convince people. So I may possibly round out my project” with more social welfare measures, he said.
Macron later said he was prepared to raise the state pension age from 62 to 64 — rather than 65 as his campaign program pledged — to avoid “too many tensions” and “build a consensus.”
In an interview with the Voix du Nord newspaper, he called Le Pen a “demagogue,” saying she was “someone who said to people what they want to hear at the moment they want to hear it.”
Le Pen met with her campaign team Monday morning before heading to visit a cereal farmer in the central Yonne region, which placed her first in Sunday’s vote.
Returning to the main priority of French people — and the focus of all her campaigning — she accused Macron of doing too little to help voters with the rising cost of living.
“Anticipating events is absolutely essential. At the moment, we’re improvising,” she said, before repeating her promises to slash taxes on food and fuel.
The arch-nationalist, 53, also denied that she planned for France to leave the European Union, saying instead she wanted to “change the structure” of the 27-member club.
Polls gauging second-round voting intentions mostly point to around 53 percent for Macron and 47 percent for Le Pen.
But one poll by the Ifop-Fiducial group suggested Macron could have only a razor-thin win with 51 percent versus 49 percent.
While opponents accuse her of being divisive and racist, Le Pen has sought to project a more moderate image in this campaign and has focused on voters’ daily worries over inflation.
Both candidates will now scramble to woo voters of their defeated first-round rivals.
“We’re going to have to win over the French people who didn’t vote for Emmanuel Macron in the first round,” government spokesman Gabriel Attal told the France Inter broadcaster on Monday.
In an early boost for the president, Communist Party candidate Fabien Roussel, Socialist Anne Hidalgo, Yannick Jadot of the Greens and right-wing Republicans candidate Valerie Pecresse said they would vote for him to prevent the far-right leader coming to power.
Melenchon told his supporters not to give a “single vote” to Le Pen, but he stopped short of backing Macron directly.
“If Macron wants to convince our voters, he’s going have to work for it,” said Melenchon’s campaign director, Manuel Bompard.
Meanwhile Le Pen’s far-right rival Eric Zemmour, who garnered just over seven percent on Sunday, threw his weight behind her.
A pivotal moment in the next stage of the campaign will come on April 20 when the two candidates take part in a live TV debate, just like five years ago when a better-prepared Macron won the day.
But this time will be different, said political scientist Brice Teinturier.
Macron, he said, “is no longer the new candidate representing a kind of freshness” while Le Pen “is no longer the person people automatically reject.”
Macron is expected to target her past admiration for Russian leader Vladimir Putin, an explosive issue during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Marine Le Pen is the candidate for depending on Russia,” Macron told the Voix du Nord.
The candidates from France’s traditional parties of government — the Socialists and the Republicans — suffered humiliating defeats.
Sunday’s vote spelled disaster for Hidalgo, the Socialist mayor of Paris, who won only 1.75 percent, a historic low for the party.
The vote for Pecresse’s Republicans collapsed to 4.78 percent from 20 percent in 2017.
On Monday, Pecresse admitted her campaign finances, which included five million euros ($5.5 million) of her own money, were in a “critical” state, and called for donations from supporters.
Public campaign spending reimbursements are drastically reduced for candidates who fail to reach five percent.
Abstention on Sunday hit 26 percent, a sharp increase from the first round in 2017.
France’s Macron, Le Pen trade barbs ahead of run-off
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France’s Macron, Le Pen trade barbs ahead of run-off
WHO chief says reasons US gave for withdrawing ‘untrue’
- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a joint statement Thursday that Washington had formally withdrawn from the WHO
- And in a post on X, Tedros added: “Unfortunately, the reasons cited for the US decision to withdraw from WHO are untrue”
GENEVA: The head of the UN’s health agency on Saturday pushed back against Washington’s stated reasons for withdrawing from the World Health Organization, dismissing US criticism of the WHO as “untrue.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that US announcement this week that it had formally withdrawn from the WHO “makes both the US and the world less safe.”
And in a post on X, he added: “Unfortunately, the reasons cited for the US decision to withdraw from WHO are untrue.”
He insisted: “WHO has always engaged with the US, and all Member States, with full respect for their sovereignty.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a joint statement Thursday that Washington had formally withdrawn from the WHO.
They accused the agency, of numerous “failures during the Covid-19 pandemic” and of acting “repeatedly against the interests of the United States.”
The WHO has not yet confirmed that the US withdrawal has taken effect.
- ‘Trashed and tarnished’ -
The two US officials said the WHO had “trashed and tarnished” the United States, and had compromised its independence.
“The reverse is true,” the WHO said in a statement.
“As we do with every Member State, WHO has always sought to engage with the United States in good faith.”
The agency strenuously rejected the accusation from Rubio and Kennedy that its Covid response had “obstructed the timely and accurate sharing of critical information that could have saved American lives and then concealed those failures.”
Kennedy also suggested in a video posted to X Friday that the WHO was responsible for “the Americans who died alone in nursing homes (and) the small businesses that were destroyed by reckless mandates” to wear masks and get vaccinated.
The US withdrawal, he insisted, was about “protecting American sovereignty, and putting US public health back in the hands of the American people.”
Tedros warned on X that the statement “contains inaccurate information.”
“Throughout the pandemic, WHO acted quickly, shared all information it had rapidly and transparently with the world, and advised Member States on the basis of the best available evidence,” the agency said.
“WHO recommended the use of masks, vaccines and physical distancing, but at no stage recommended mask mandates, vaccine mandates or lockdowns,” it added.
“We supported sovereign governments to make decisions they believed were in the best interests of their people, but the decisions were theirs.”
- Withdrawal ‘raises issues’ -
The row came as Washington struggled to dislodge itself from the WHO, a year after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to that effect.
The one-year withdrawal process reached completion on Thursday, but Kennedy and Rubio regretted in their statement that the UN health agency had “not approved our withdrawal and, in fact, claims that we owe it compensation.”
WHO has highlighted that when Washington joined the organization in 1948, it reserved the right to withdraw, as long as it gave one year’s notice and had met “its financial obligations to the organization in full for the current fiscal year.”
But Washington has not paid its 2024 or 2025 dues, and is behind around $260 million.
“The notification of withdrawal raises issues,” WHO said Saturday, adding that the topic would be examined during WHO’s Executive Board meeting next month and by the annual World Health Assembly meeting in May.
“We hope the US will return to active participation in WHO in the future,” Tedros said Saturday.
“Meanwhile, WHO remains steadfastly committed to working with all countries in pursuit of its core mission and constitutional mandate: the highest attainable standard of health as a fundamental right for all people.”
