PARIS, April 23: Extreme right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen pushed for a head-on TV showdown with French President Jacques Chirac on Tuesday as protests snowballed across the country at his shock surge into the runoff of the presidential election. But Chirac’s camp immediately rejected the offer.
His call sent a shudder through Chirac’s camp, which fears the former paratrooper, 73, will launch an all-out attack on charges of sleaze dogging the president, and Chirac aides argued for a tightly controlled discussion moderated by journalists.
As the two sides considered how to debate, school students joined the wave of marches that have erupted each day, with isolated violence in Paris and other cities, since Sunday night.
“What we want is a confrontation, a peaceable one but not just a juxtaposition of monologues, a so-called American-style debate,” Le Pen’s campaign director Bruno Gollnisch said.
But Michele Alliot-Marie, head of Chirac’s Rally for the Republic (RPR) party, was cautious, saying: “I have seen Le Pen in debates, I have seen the way he employs slander and insult more than ideas. That is the issue we must consider.”
Asked if Chirac’s camp would prefer that contenders take turns answering questions from journalists rather than debate head-on before the May 5 runoff vote, she told RTL radio:
“If the debate takes place, we must find a way to guarantee the dignity and democratic nature of this head-on debate.”
Le Pen stunned most of France and alarmed Europe by beating Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin into third place in Sunday’s first round, winning nearly 17 percent of the vote on a France-for-the French platform that blamed crime on immigration.
“We don’t have the right to vote, but we have the right to demonstrate and say that what could happen is unacceptable,” said one 16-year-old schoolgirl in Angouleme, southwest France, where 2,000 pupils skipped classes to protest against Le Pen.
SWELLING PROTESTS: More demonstrations were planned in Paris and Marseille after a night of protests on Monday that LCI television estimated drew 100,000 people onto French streets.
The protests are expected to reach their height on May 1, when traditional Labour Day marches could turn into huge anti-Le Pen protests.
Le Pen has urged his National Front party supporters to flock to a mass rally in Paris on the same day in a coincidence that, with passions running so high, could spell trouble.
The TV debate, which has attracted millions of viewers before past runoffs, could be key in forming voter opinions before a second round which Chirac is expected to win hands down as even left-wingers rally to his side to defeat Le Pen.
In the latest sounding, opinion pollster Louis Harris forecast that 75 percent of the vote would go to Chirac. Le Pen was given 13 percent — against nearly 17 percent in the first round — with 12 percent undecided or giving other responses.
Pollster Philippe Mechet of the Sofres institute said he believed Chirac had much to lose and nothing to gain in any sort of debate and said he should refuse to face Le Pen.
“It would be appalling. What does he (Le Pen) have to lose? Absolutely nothing. He will go all out,” Mechet said.
GOING FOR THE JUGULAR: While Jospin largely passed over allegations that Chirac was embroiled in the corruption that for decades afflicted much of French politics, Le Pen — who detests Chirac with a passion — returned to them frequently in his campaign.
“If he were a company chairman, he would leave his company’s annual general meeting in handcuffs,” Le Pen said on Monday.
Poking fun at Chirac, he said the Gaullist “believes he’s a god of Olympia and doesn’t want to debate with a mere mortal”.
Only last year France’s highest court intervened to shield Chirac, as a sitting head of state, from questioning as judges sought to ask him about a complex tangle of probes into alleged graft at City Hall during his 1977-1995 reign as Paris mayor.
A separate affair also emerged in the election run-up with a court probe into suspect cash payments made by Chirac for luxury trips he took abroad in the 1990s. The president has denied wrongdoing and sees a plot by rivals to undermine him.
Sunday’s contest saw the vote splintered between a record 16 candidates and an unprecedented abstention rate of 28 percent that highlighted public disaffection with mainstream politics.
Definitive Interior Ministry figures with all eligible votes counted showed Le Pen won a total of 4,805,307 votes compared to 4,610,749 for Jospin — a difference of only 194,658 votes.
Le Pen took 16.86 percent of the vote compared to Jospin’s 16.18. Chirac led with of 5,666,440 votes, or 19.88 percent.
Chirac’s unimpressive score — the worst showing by any frontrunner in the 44-year history of France’s Fifth Republic — was also seen as a message to the 69-year-old over his lack of credibility with large chunks of the electorate.
Swallowing their pride, the Socialist, Communist and Greens parties have urged their supporters to vote for Chirac as the best way to block Le Pen from power. They are hoping the left recovers in time for legislative elections due in June.—Reuters
