France votes in cliffhanger presidential election on Sunday

PARIS - France goes to the polls on Sunday for the first round of a bitterly fought presidential election, crucial to the future of Europe and a closely-watched test of voters' anger with the political establishment.

Nearly 47 million voters will decide, under tight security, whether to back a pro-EU centrist newcomer, a scandal-ridden veteran conservative who wants to slash public spending, a far-left eurosceptic admirer of Fidel Castro or appoint France's first woman president, to shut borders and ditch the euro.

The outcome will be anxiously monitored around the world as a sign of whether the populist tide that saw Britain vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump's election in the United States is still rising, or starting to ebb.

Emmanuel Macron, 39, a centrist ex-banker who set up his party just a year ago, is the opinion polls' favorite to win the first round and beat far-right National Front chief Marine Le Pen in the two-person run-off on May 7.

For them to win the top two qualifying positions on Sunday would represent a seismic shift in the political landscape, as the second round would feature neither of the mainstream parties that have governed France for decades.

"It wouldn't be the classic left vs right divide but two views of the world clashing," said Ifop pollsters' Jerome Fourquet. "Macron bills himself as the progressist versus conservatives, Le Pen as the patriot versus the globalists."

But conservative Francois Fillon is making a bit of a comeback after being plagued for months by a fake jobs scandal, and leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon's ratings have surged in recent weeks. Any two of the four is seen as having a chance to qualify for the run-off.

The seven other candidates, including the ruling Socialist party's Benoit Hamon, two Trotskyists, three fringe nationalists and a former shepherd-turned-centrist lawmaker are lagging very far behind in opinion polls.

Months of campaigning has been dominated by scandals which have left many voters agonizing over their choice. Some 20-30 percent might not vote and about 30 percent of those who plan to show up at the polling stations are unsure whom to vote for.

Adding uncertainty to France's most unpredictable election in decades, pollsters say they might not be able to give precise estimates of the outcome at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) as usual, because small and medium-sized polling stations will be open one hour longer than in past elections.

"CHEERING MADLY"?

Bankers and brokers in Paris and far beyond are expected to be glued to their screens all evening. The possibility of a Le Pen-Melenchon run-off is not the most likely scenario but is one which alarms them.

While Macron wants to further beef up the euro zone, Le Pen has told supporters "the EU will die." She wants to return to the Franc, re-denominate the country's debt stock, tax imports and reject international treaties.

Melenchon also wants to radically overhaul the European Union and hold a referendum on whether to leave the bloc.

Le Pen or Melenchon would struggle, in parliamentary elections in June, to win a majority to carry out such radical moves, but their growing popularity worries both investors and France's EU partners.

"It is no secret that we will not be cheering madly should Sunday's result produce a second round between Le Pen and Melenchon," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said, adding that the election posed a risk to the global economy.

Both U.S. President Donald Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama have shown interest in the vote.

Obama spoke with Macron over the phone on Thursday, and Trump said the following day he expected the killing of a policeman by a suspected Islamist in Paris to boost Le Pen's chances.

Previous militant attacks, such as the November 2015 killings in Paris ahead of regional polls, did not appear to boost the votes of those espousing tougher national security.

If either Macron or Fillon were victorious, each would face challenges.

For Macron, a big question would be whether he could win a majority in parliament in June. Fillon, though likely to struggle less to get a majority, would likely be dogged by an embezzlement scandal, in which he denies wrongdoing.

Some 67,000 polling stations will open at 8 a.m., monitored by more than 50,000 police officers.

(Writing by Ingrid Melander; editing by Andrew Roche)

source: news.abs-cbn.com

'Fake job' scandal deepens for France's Fillon

A scandal surrounding French presidential hopeful Francois Fillon deepened on Tuesday with allegations that he obtained jobs for his children as well as his wife that paid around one million euros.

The new claims in the Canard Enchaine came as investigators raided parliament and seized documents as part of a preliminary probe into a first set of charges levelled against the conservative candidate by the weekly paper last week.

The Canard alleged in its new issue to be published Wednesday that it had unearthed proof Penelope Fillon was paid as a parliamentary aide out of public funds available to MPs for an additional seven years, nicknaming her "Miss Moneypenny".

In another new allegation, the paper said two of the couple's five children, Charles and Marie, had earned 84,000 euros ($91,000) working as parliamentary assistants.

Fillon, 62, was the long-time frontrunner in the presidential race and had been widely forecast to face far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the runoff in May, but the claims have hit his support.

The Canard Enchaine alleged last week that Welsh-born Penelope earned around 500,000 euros as a parliamentary aide over eight years from 1998 to 2007.

The new allegations bring to more than 830,000 euros the total sum she allegedly made.

The Canard said it could find no witnesses who could recall her working at parliament and Le Parisien newspaper reported she did not have an accreditation badge or an official email account at the National Assembly.

- Support slipping -

Fillon responded Tuesday by repeating his claim that he is the target of a dirty tricks campaign designed to knock him out of the presidential contest.

"Such a large-scale and professional campaign has been mounted just to eliminate a candidate by other means than the democratic route," he told a business conference.

Fillon has argued that his wife has "always" worked for him, doing tasks such as editing his speeches and meeting people in his constituency.

In addition to the parliamentary job, Penelope worked at a literary review owned by a billionaire friend of her husband's where she allegedly earned another 100,000 euros.

The couple were quizzed separately by investigators for several hours on Monday.

Sources close to the investigation said Fillon's staff had voluntarily handed over documents in the raid at parliament on Tuesday.

Lawmakers are entitled to employ family members, and it is a common practice in many countries, but questions have focused on what work was actually done.

Investigators have also quizzed the former editor and owner of the literary review, La Revue des deux Mondes.

The claims are damaging for Fillon, a devout Catholic who has campaigned on his "clean" record and has vowed to cut 500,000 civil servants' jobs, slash welfare benefits and increase working hours.

The former prime minister swept past scandal-tainted ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy and ex-premier Alain Juppe in November's Republicans primary.

But Fillon has lost momentum since the allegations first emerged.

An opinion poll published on Sunday showed Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigration and anti-EU National Front (FN), would score 25 percent in the first round of the election on April 23, with Fillon slipping to second place and virtually neck-and-neck with the fast-rising centrist Emmanuel Macron.

- Low-key wife -

Fillon has insisted that his wife, also 62, has played a real, if discreet, role in his long political career.

He says that when he was an MP in Paris his wife did a lot of constituency work but was based at their 12th-century chateau near Le Mans in northern France.

Penelope, who has not spoken publicly about the accusations, has always styled herself as a low-key political wife.

A trained lawyer, she told Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper after her husband became prime minister in 2007 that she preferred staying at home than in glitzy Paris.

"I'm just a country peasant, this is not my natural habitat," she joked.

In 2008, when her husband was prime minister, she told French TV her role amounted to "accompanying him (on some functions), and it is limited to that".

The Republicans group in the French parliament on Monday closed ranks around Fillon, expressing "unanimous support".

source: news.abs-cbn.com