by Tangi Salaün, Elizabeth Pineau and Noemie Olive
ETAPLES-SUR-MER, Pas-de-Calais/FIGEAC, Lot (Reuters) – Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen threw their last forces into battle on Friday, the last day of the presidential campaign, one calling for “a referendum ” for ” a strong economic France ” or ” which is heading towards bankruptcy and demagoguery “, the other inviting to choose between ” Macron or France “.
For lack of real support for their programs beyond their partisan base, and after a televised debate which did not make it possible to decide between them as clearly as in 2017, the two finalists summoned the “republican front” against the extreme right for the outgoing president, “everything except Macron” for the candidate of the National Rally (RN).
Emmanuel Macron is the favorite two days into the second round, 10 to 14 percentage points ahead of his rival, according to the polls, but his margin of safety is narrower than in 2017, when he had obtained 66, 1% of the votes cast, and there is great uncertainty about the actual level of participation.
“The real question is, can we tear the French out of abstentionism by refusing to campaign as he (Macron) did before the first round and by descending from Olympus exclusively during a few days to be able to actually, rather than present his project, seriously insult his opponent?”, declared Marine Le Pen on CNews and Europe 1.
To the “contempt” and “arrogance” which her opponent allegedly showed during the debate, a line she hammered during her final meeting Thursday evening in Arras (North), and a reproach that Emmanuel Macron had himself heard from the mouths of residents of Saint-Denis, the RN candidate sought to oppose her “common sense as a mother”.
“He doesn’t like the French,” she said on Cnews and Europe 1, echoing the visceral rejection that the head of state inspires among some French people, former “yellow vests”, opponents of health measures or others. modest workers, “forgotten by globalization” and worried about their purchasing power, many of whom voted for the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round.
Faced with this disparate “anti-Macron front”, the outgoing president once again appealed on Friday to the “republican front” against an extreme right which “lives on its fears and resentments”.
“KINDNESS”
Like Thursday in Saint-Denis, where he denounced the stigmatization of the Muslim population by his rival, an attitude which according to him carries the seeds of a “civil war”, Emmanuel Macron however recognized that Marine Le Pen was also nourished by failures of his five-year term.
“What we failed to do, things that I myself failed to do, that is to say, to appease certain anger,” he said on France Inter.
During a last electoral trip to Figeac (Lot), a socialist town symbolizing both the industrial and rural fabric of France, and where Jean-Luc Mélenchon came out on top in the first round, the outgoing president assured of “a project forward-looking and benevolent, idealistic and realistic”.
He pledged to fight against “the drama of medical deserts” which “feeds anger, and today extremes”, to “restore public services” in rural areas, to “invest in our transport infrastructure and communications”.
Opponents deployed at the beginning of his meeting, in the open air, a banner on which one could read “When everything is private, we will be deprived of everything”, and threw sheets of paper on which was written “President of the rich” and “We don’t want crumbs, we want growth”.
Showing his desire for dialogue, Emmanuel Macron attacked, without ever quoting her, the RN candidate, saying he refused to speak of “hate” and division.
“We would be asked to choose, if I hear one or the other. I will tell you with great conviction, on this last day of the campaign: France is a bloc and it is made up of all this” , he launched. “We will never let anyone down,” he said.
The second round, he estimated, will be “a referendum (…) for a strong economic France (…) or which is heading towards bankruptcy and demagoguery (…) for or against loyalty to our values, our history, who we are,” he added.
Thursday in Roye (Somme) and Arras, Friday in Etaples-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais), Marine Le Pen sought to convince the “silent majority” that she would have to answer a question: “Macron or the France”.
“The goal is to fire Macron because he has put France in misery,” testifies Pascal Blondel, a 52-year-old gardener, former “yellow vest” and RN activist.
(Report by Elizabeth Pineau in Arras and Etaples-sur-Mer, Noémie Olive in Figeac, written by Tangi Salaün and Sophie Louet, edited by)