French Presidential | Last stretch, the Macron-Le Pen debate in the crosshairs

(Paris) Last straight line for the two finalists in the French presidential election before the second round of April 24: outgoing President Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen clashed from a distance on Monday trying to destabilize the opponent, two days before their highly anticipated televised face-off.

Nothing is played and if the centrist candidate president is always given the winner, in a range of 53 to 55.5% against 44.5 to 47% for Marine Le Pen, he is not immune to a faux pas or a major mobilization of the anti-Macron electorate.

A possible strong abstention further adds to the uncertainty of the second round when 26% of voters did not go to the polls last Sunday for the first round.

Wednesday’s televised debate could mark a turning point, as it did five years ago during the same Macron-Le Pen debate that the latter mishandled. This time, the far-right candidate believes she is better prepared and says she is “extremely serene”.

After the Easter Sunday break, M^and Le Pen returned to the field on Monday with a trip to Calvados (north-west). “I come to seek the strength of the people” and “I am very confident, I think I will win,” she said.

“I hope that the debate will take place calmly. We don’t have the same ideas at all, the same vision of the country, of what the economy should be, to whom it should be turned, “she said during a long walkabout under a spring sun.

For Emmanuel Macron, Wednesday’s debate will be “a moment of clarification”. On the form, “the challenge is to be persuasive and convincing without taking an overly professorial tone”, underlines his entourage.

“Deep Divide”

Emmanuel Macron has targeted his opponent on a sovereign subject par excellence, the reform of institutions, by posing as the guarantor of law and respect for the Constitution, thus hoping to discredit Marine Le Pen.

“I have a deep cleavage with the far-right candidate, it is that I am for reforming the Constitution by respecting the rules of the Constitution, which seems to me precisely to be the very definition of belonging to the republican field” , said the candidate president on France Culture in an interview recorded on Friday and broadcast on Saturday.

“The implicit in M’s approach^me Le Pen is that basically, once elected, she considers that she is superior to the Constitution, since she may not respect it in order to change the rules, that is a rupture and that is serious, ”criticized Mr. Macron.

The candidate of the National Rally (RN) intends to submit to referendum her draft constitutional revision on immigration and the registration of the “national priority”.

The Secretary of State for European Affairs and support of Emmanuel Macron, Clément Beaune, also castigated “the reversals, inconsistencies and inconsistencies of Marine Le Pen on subjects that she exploits or on which she does not really know what is his position.

“On the wearing of the veil, she says it, she assumed it even in the street, publicly, that the veil had to be removed for everyone in the public space”, launched the minister. “It’s unreasonable for everyone and it’s contrary to republican values,” he added on Sud Radio.

“Complex problem”

Several lieutenants of the far-right candidate, however, said that this ban on the veil in public space, yet present in Marine Le Pen’s initial project, was no longer her priority in the fight against Islamism. Marine Le Pen admitted that the veil was a “complex problem” and that she was “not obtuse”.

And on Monday, the National Rally was still trying to clarify its position on a sensitive subject.

The question of the veil “is a complicated affair”, recognized on the radio France Inter Louis Aliot, the mayor RN of Perpignan (south): “It will be a parliamentary debate and, at that time, the choice will be made. But we need a policy that tends, little by little, towards the banning of the veil in public space”.

“It is not for us to attack people. What we are saying is that not all women who wear the veil are Islamists ”, for his part tried to argue on Sud Radio, the RN mayor of Fréjus (south-east) David Rachline.

France has between five and six million practicing and non-practicing Muslims, according to several studies on the subject, which makes Islam the second religion in the country and the French Muslim community the first in Europe.

On Friday, two Muslim federations, the Grand Mosque of Paris and the Rally of Muslims of France, called to vote for Emmanuel Macron in the second round.