France presidential election campaign heats up with rallies on May Day

As Marine Le Pen received an endorsement from her father, co-founder of the far-right Front National party, centrist Emmanuel Macron held an emotional meeting with a Moroccan man whose father died years ago when he was thrown off a Paris bridge by far-right skinheads.

French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, flanked by her body guard Thierry Legier, blows kisses to supporters at the end of a rally in Villepinte, outside Paris, on May 1, 2017. FrancoisShow more

PARIS // With just six days to go until a French presidential vote that could define Europe’s future, far-right leader Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron held high-stakes rallies on Monday that overlapped with May Day workers’ rights marches, reminding both candidates that jobs are voters’ top concern.

The tense presidential campaign interrupted the usual calm of the May Day holiday. Supporters of both candidates took to the streets, airwaves and social media to weigh on an election closely watched by financial markets and France’s neighbours as a test of the global populist wave.

As Ms Le Pen received an endorsement from her father, the co-founder of the Front National party, Mr Macron held an emotional meeting with a Moroccan man whose father died years ago when he was thrown off a Paris bridge by far-right skinheads.

Wanted or not, Ms Le Pen was praised by her 88-year-old father, Jean-Marie, who she expelled from the Front National in 2015 after he reiterated anti-Semitic comments.

In a speech before Paris’s gilded statue of Joan of Arc, his heroine, Mr Le Pen urged French voters to back his daughter in Sunday’s run-off.

“She is not Joan of Arc but she accepts the same mission ... France,” he said.

He denounced Mr Macron, her rival, calling him a “masked Socialist” and a candidate backed by the highly unpopular Socialist president, Francois Hollande.

“He wants to dynamise the economy, but he is among those who dynamited it,” the elderly Mr Le Pen said, referring to France’s stagnant economy and high unemployment rate of around 10 per cent, and Mr Macron’s role in it as one-time economy minister.

Ms Le Pen, meanwhile, also skewered Mr Macron while speaking outside of Paris on Monday, calling the former investment banker a “puppet” of the world of finance and Islamic fundamentalists.

Cheers of “Marine, president!” and anti-immigrant chants rose up in the crowd of thousands.

Ms Le Pen, who hopes to mimic Donald Trump’s populist electoral victory, compared Mr Macron to Hillary Clinton. She also sought repeatedly to puncture Mr Macron’s argument that he represents change, calling him Mr Hollande’s lapdog, the candidate of “the caviar left”.

She warned that his pro-business policies would not create jobs but send them abroad and leave French workers hungry.

Elsewhere, Mr Macron sought to remind voters of the Front National’s dark past, paying homage to a Moroccan man who was thrown to his death in the Seine River amid a far-right march over two decades ago. The presidential candidate joined the man’s son and anti-Front National protesters at an annual commemoration near the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Ms Le Pen’s party traditionally holds a May Day march in Paris to honour Joan of Arc. But at the 1995 event, a group of skinheads broke away and pushed 29-year-old Brahim Bourram off a bridge into the Seine, where he drowned. The death drew national outrage.

Standing on the same bridge on Monday, Mr Macron hugged Bourram’s son Said, who was nine when his father was killed.

Said, a chauffeur who supports Mr Macron, said his father was targeted “because he was a foreigner, an Arab. That is why I am fighting, to say ‘No’ to racism”.

Mr Macron said that despite Ms Le Pen’s efforts to distance herself from her father’s anti-Semitism, “the roots are there, and they are very much alive”.

“I will not forget anything and I will fight to the last second, not only against her project but against the idea she has of democracy and the nation,” Mr Macron said.

Polls consider the centrist candidate the front-runner but the race has been exceptionally unpredictable.

* Associated Press