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Another weekend, another round of violence on the strife-torn streets of France. That was the grim forecast Friday as the country's interior minister warned of a "very high risk of public disorder" across the coming 48-hours as some 70,000 police officers prepare for riots over the Halloween weekend.
The post France Prepares for ‘Very High’ Violence as It Braces for Halloween Riots appeared first on Breitbart.
Infighting has broken out among centrist candidates for France’s presidential race, splitting the mainstream vote and making a runoff between far-right Marine Le Pen and hard-left Jean-Luc Melenchon more likely.
Opinion polls before next April’s presidential election show Le Pen is nearly certain to qualify for a second-round runoff in May and that Melenchon is consistently nudging ahead of mainstream candidates.
Centre-right Edouard Philippe, President Emmanuel Macron’s former prime minister, has so far been the centre’s torchbearer.
But Philippe’s lacklustre campaign, voter weariness near the end of Macron’s two terms, an explosive social and security context and the challenges he faces from within his own camp have hurt his polling, people in Macron’s camp and political analysts say.
“There’s panic on board because there was no scenario planned for this. They hadn’t anticipated the cataclysm under way,” said Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet, a political communications specialist at Sciences Po.
Philippe has also faced criticism over several awkward interventions — including suggesting in a podcast that ideally a newly elected president should have three months to rest before taking office — and political analysts say he is struggling to connect with voters at a time of rising political tensions.
“The terrible thing is that he isn’t cutting through,” Moreau-Chevrolet told Reuters. “They didn’t understand that you have to campaign. There’s a kind of dilettantism.”
The anxiety has sharpened tensions between Philippe and his main rival, Gabriel Attal, another former prime minister. They are locked in a battle over who should step aside for the centrist ticket.
Philippe fell to 15% support in an IFOP-Fiducial poll for Le Figaro newspaper, a six-point drop since September. That is below the 16.5% for Melenchon, who would have enough to qualify for a runoff against Le Pen.
Attal stood at 13%, behind Melenchon and Raphael Glucksmann, a mainstream centre-left candidate.
Under pressure from lawmakers in his camp to abandon his presidential ambitions and rally to Philippe, Attal irritated many Macron allies this week by reviving the idea of a broad centrist primary, a proposal critics say risks fuelling division at a time when moderates can least afford it.
Still, Attal has leverage. As leader of Macron’s Renaissance party, he controls the purse strings of the party machine.
“It’s catastrophic,” said Jean-Baptiste Moreau, a former lawmaker from Macron’s camp.
“They are attacking one another in the media and they are both collapsing in the polls. We’re heading straight towards an RN-LFI second round,” he said of Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Melenchon’s France Unbowed (LFI). “In the current state of opinion, I don’t see how we avoid it.”
The fragmentation stretches beyond the Philippe-Attal feud.
On the centre-left, Glucksmann has gained ground after winning the Socialist primary. On the right, Bruno Retailleau, a former interior minister, and David Lisnard, the free-market mayor of Cannes, are targeting the same moderate electorate.
Philippe’s supporters say reports of his demise are premature. Laurent Marcangeli, a member of Philippe’s party Horizons, acknowledged recent polling setbacks but said the former prime minister remained the only centrist candidate with a realistic path to the runoff.
“He’s still in the race for the second round and to prevent a Le Pen-Melenchon duel,” said Marcangeli, adding that in some polls Attal scored as low as single digits.
Some Macron allies, however, are openly questioning whether either man should carry on. They say any association with Macron, who is finishing his second term at record-low popularity, will weigh on a centrist candidate.
“The two of them are collapsing,” said Perrine Goulet, a lawmaker from Macron ally MoDem. “Any candidate who has been in a Macron government is going to be struggling.”
With Le Pen and Melenchon consolidating support at opposite ends of the spectrum, she said moderates needed to put aside personal ambitions and rally behind a single contender able to unite supporters of Glucksmann through to Retailleau.
“We’re calling on everyone to put their egos aside and find the best candidate,” Goulet said.
“If we keep Glucksmann on one side, Retailleau on the other, Edouard Philippe, Gabriel Attal, we’ll end up with an LFI-RN second round. The danger is simply too great.”
“Podría haber sido cualquiera de nosotros”. La frase se repite en bucle estos días entre los vecinos de Trappes tras el atentado racista en Francia, que dejó heridas a cinco personas, entre ellas una niña de 12 años, y se cobró la vida de Pengo Bossio Wangi, un hombre de 26 años. Algunos ya no salen de casa por miedo. Otros se sobresaltan cada vez que un vehículo pasa cerca. Casi todos sienten que llevan una diana en la espalda por el simple hecho de ser de origen africano o magrebí. Mientras lloran la pérdida de Bossio Wangi, un joven deportista muy querido en esta ciudad multicultural de la periferia de París —donde crecieron, entre otros, el actor Omar Sy o el futbolista Nicolas Anelka―, los vecinos se preguntan: ¿cuánto odio tiene que albergar una persona para disparar ocho veces a una niña solo por el color de su piel? La hipervigilancia como secuela del atentado los tiene agotados. Pero sobre todo sienten rabia contra quienes dan altavoz al odio en prime time, un día tras otro: medios de extrema derecha como CNews y canales de información continua de corte sensacionalista como LCI o BFM, cuyos platós se han convertido en escenarios de banalización de las ideas racistas.
© Pedro Nunes (REUTERS)
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