Fillon
to quit presidential race if Sunday rally flops: aide
‘He
can fight judges, but he can’t fight his own party,’ adviser
says.
By PIERRE
BRIANÇON 3/3/17, 12:35 PM CET Updated 3/3/17, 5:47 PM CET
PARIS — François
Fillon will withdraw from the French presidential race next week if a
rally of his supporters called for Sunday in Paris fails to be the
show of force he expects, one of his closest aides told POLITICO.
“He can fight
judges, but he can’t fight his own party for much longer,” said
the adviser, who declined to be named.
On Wednesday, the
conservative candidate announced that he would soon be placed under
formal investigation by judicial authorities over allegations that he
had illegally funneled public funds to his wife and children. But, in
a defiant speech, he also declared he would stay in the election race
— setting in motion a wave of resignations from his campaign team.
The exodus started a
few hours after the speech when his top foreign affairs adviser and
would-be cabinet minister Bruno Le Maire — himself a losing
candidate in the conservative primary last November — called it
quits because Fillon had promised he would resign if ever put under
formal investigation.
Since then,
officials from his Républicains party have deserted the campaign in
droves. The supporters of Bordeaux mayor Alain Juppé, who lost to
Fillon in the primary’s final round, have all withdrawn. Among the
high-profile deserters was Juppé’s former campaign manager Gilles
Boyer, who had since become the Fillon campaign treasurer.
The first round of
the election takes place on April 23 and the nomination deadline for
candidates is just two weeks away.
An aide to Juppé
told POLITICO that contrary to media reports suggesting he wasn’t
excited at the prospect of running in the election after losing badly
in November, the Bordeaux mayor and former prime minister was
“warming up” to the idea.
But the party does
not have much time to switch to a new candidate. The first round of
the election takes place on April 23 and the nomination deadline for
candidates is just two weeks away.
Fear of success
Angry Républicains
officials cautioned Friday that making Sunday’s demonstration a
yardstick of Fillon’s support was “meaningless” because
catholic right-wingers had organized en masse to send sympathizers to
the gathering.
A former Le Maire
supporter, who resigned from the Fillon campaign along with him on
Thursday, said that the movement Sens Commun (Common Sense) — which
organized within the Républicains four years ago to oppose same-sex
marriage, voted into law by the current socialist-led parliament —
had mobilized to bring busloads of supporters to Paris.
“It’s quite easy
to put a few thousand people on a small esplanade in the posh 16th
district and call it success,” the Le Maire aide said.
The fear, in other
words, is that Fillon might call the gathering a vibrant
demonstration of support, and choose to fight on.
A “draft Juppé”
movement started this week to ensure the former prime minister would
be able to submit the 500 nominations from national or local elected
officials that all presidential candidates must present by March 17.
The Constitutional Council, which gathers the endorsements, said
Friday it had started to receive some nominations for Juppé.
Even though Juppé
seems the most likely candidate to replace Fillon if he withdraws
from the race, former president Nicolas Sarkozy, a bitter Juppé
rival, has not given up the idea of playing the party’s kingmaker
behind the scenes, the Juppé aide noted. Le Monde reported on Friday
that two of Fillon’s top supporters — Senate president Gérard
Larcher and former Républicains general secretary Bernard Accoyer —
met the former French president to discuss “acting very quickly”
in the event of a Fillon withdrawal next week.
Leaving the lifeboat
“Fillon is in an
impossible situation,” a French conservative MP told POLITICO
Friday, explaining: “It has become impossible for us to campaign
for him on the ground, we can’t find volunteers to do it, he can’t
do radio or TV interviews because he rightly fears the questions will
all be about the scandal.”
French independent
presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
French independent
presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
The MP, who declined
to be named because he said he didn’t want to seem to be “joining
in the onslaught” against Fillon, added: “If you’re a top
campaign guy in Fillon’s team today, you don’t want to be the
last one to leave the lifeboat next week, that’s why they’re all
leaving.”
Bitterness was
running high in the Fillon camp Friday, amid a sense that a
withdrawal next week was all but certain. One top adviser predicted
the election would become a duel between far-right leader Marine Le
Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron. “Fillon’s votes will go partly
to these two, and Juppé won’t be able to even reach the 20 percent
mark. It’s the end of the [conservative] party,” another top
adviser said.
“Plus, now that
[Fillon] has been talking like Le Pen for two weeks, we look like a
party of extremists” — Alain Juppé aide
The Juppé
supporters, on the other hand, accuse Fillon of having led the
Républicains to disaster with the stubborn and tone-deaf way he
reacted to the allegations that he used public money to pay his wife
and children for fake jobs.
“Plus, now that he
has been talking like Le Pen for two weeks, we look like a party of
extremists,” the Juppé aide said, complaining about the harsh
language Fillon has adopted.
Even before the
Sunday rally, Fillon will have a chance to test his popularity
Saturday when he meets representatives of the so-called “civil
society” — personalities from outside politics he enrolled in
order to show that he wouldn’t rely just on professional
politicians.
But even such a
supposedly friendly audience may prove disappointing. According to
the Le Maire associate, about half the personalities invited to the
meeting have already bowed out.
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