Islam versus Europe

Marine Le Pen, leader of France's far-right National Front party, said in a May Day rally that she would not vote for either incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy or Socialist challenger François Hollande in Sunday's presidential runoff.

By News Wires (text)

REUTERS - French far-right leader Marine Le Pen delivered a further blow on Tuesday to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s hopes of re-election by refusing to endorse him and telling her six million supporters to make their own choice at Sunday’s ballot.

Sarkozy, who faces off against Socialist Francois Hollande on May 6, needs many of the 17.9 percent of voters who chose National Front leader Le Pen last week to switch to backing him in the runoff if he is to overcome first-round winner Hollande.

But Le Pen, who came third on April 22 with a score that eclipsed her father’s record at the head of the populist protest movement, told a rally in Paris on Tuesday that she personally would spoil her ballot paper in the second round by choosing to vote for neither of the two remaining contenders.

“I will not grant my trust, or a mandate, to these two candidates,” she told supporters at an annual commemoration of Joan of Arc, the national saint her group favours to the May Day celebrations held by international labour and leftist parties.

“On Sunday, I will cast a blank ballot.”

Le Pen did not further twist the knife for the conservative incumbent by urging her 6.4 million voters to do likewise. But in leaving them to make their own minds up she left it unclear how many will stay at home or even vote for Hollande, who is running a six- to 10-percentage point lead in opinion polls.

“I have made my choice,” she said. “Each of you will make yours.”

Analysts had calculated that Sarkozy might need as many as 80 percent of Le Pen’s first-round voters if he were to win. But polls indicate only about half of them intend to.

With a parliamentary election to come in June, National Front leaders believe they can break through and win seats in the legislature, especially if a heavy defeat for Sarkozy plunges his centre-right UMP party into deeper disarray.

...In a fiery speech to thousands of supporters waving French flags, Le Pen slammed Sarkozy’s rhetoric on the need to strengthen borders and maintain a clear national identity as pure theatrics and labelled him and Hollande as lackeys of the European Central Bank, IMF and European Commission.

“The French have started their emancipation,” she said, scorning the mainstream parties, the UMP and PS, or Socialists, as an indistinguishable “UMPS” bloc.

“The UMPS will not succeed,” she said. “All of their efforts cannot stop us growing and cannot block our path to power.”

Mockery of the two remaining candidates was a common theme among Le Pen’s supporters:

“Sarkozy and Hollande, they are exactly the same,” said an 18-year-old who gave her name as Justine. “If there is a difference between the two it’s their height.”

Source: France24

In my view, Marine Le Pen should consider endorsing Sarkozy if she can get something valuable and specific out of it. Sarkozy is known to be hostile to Turkey's admission to the EU but has so far refused to veto it outright. If Marine Le Pen could extract a specific, concrete and public commitment from him that he would use the French veto to bring Turkey's EU accession process to an end, it would be worth endorsing him. If Turkey gets into the EU, the islamisation of the continent will be accelerated so dramatically that it's worth taking extraordinary steps to stop it. MLP should challenge Sarkozy to make this commitment. He probably wouldn't do it, but if he did, she should ask her supporters to vote for him.