French election: voting begins as
France decides between Macron and Le Pen
Polling takes place against
background of hacking that is ‘clearly an attempt at democratic
destabilisation’
Jon Henley European affairs correspondent
@jonhenley
Sunday 7 May 2017 09.24 BST First published on Sunday 7 May
2017 07.00 BST
Voting is underway in the final round of France’s
presidential race after a massive online dump of frontrunner Emmanuel Macron’s
campaign data delivered a final dramatic twist to the country’s most bruising,
divisive and significant election in decades.
The French election watchdog warned that it could be a
criminal offence to publish the tens of thousands of hacked emails and other
documents – some reportedly fake – amid an electioneering blackout lasting from
midnight on Friday until polls close at 8pm on Sunday.
The hack, on which neither Macron or his opponent, far-right
leader Marine Le Pen, were allowed to comment publicly, was “clearly an attempt
at democratic destabilisation, like that seen during the last presidential
campaign in the US,” according to his En Marche! campaign team.
The divisive election to choose the Fifth Republic’s eighth
president has turned the country’s politics upside down, with neither of the
two mainstream centre-right and centre-left movements that have governed France
since the second world war making it to the runoff.
Seen as potentially the most important electoral contest in
many years for France and the European Union, it has pitted against each other
two candidates with diametrically opposing visions for the future of their
country and the continent.
Macron, a 39-year-old former banker and economy minister
running as an independent centrist, is economically liberal, socially
progressive, globally minded and upbeat. Le Pen is a nation-first protectionist
who wants to close France’s borders and possibly leave the euro and the EU.
Final polls published on Friday suggested Macron had widened
his lead over the Front National leader to between 22 and 23 percentage points
following an ugly TV debate in which Le Pen was widely considered to have spent
more time attacking her opponent than engaging with policy.
“The commission calls on everyone present on internet sites
and social networks – primarily the media, but also all citizens – to show
responsibility and not pass on this content so as not to distort the sincerity
of the ballot,” the election commission said on Saturday.
Many television news channels opted not even to mention the
hack, while Le Monde newspaper said on its website it would not publish any of
the nine gigabytes of leaked data before the election – partly because there
was too much, and partly because it had clearly been released with the aim of
affecting the vote.
“If these documents contain revelations, Le Monde will of
course publish them after having investigated them, respecting our journalistic
and ethical rules, and without allowing ourselves to be exploited by the
publishing calendar of anonymous actors,” the paper said.
The data was posted on a profile called EMLEAKS to Pastebin,
a site allowing anonymous document sharing. En Marche! said it was not alarmed
by the content, adding the documents “reflected the normal operations of a
campaign” but had been mixed with fakes to “sow doubt and disinformation”.
Intelligence agencies in the US said in January that the
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had ordered hacking of Democratic campaign
officials before last year’s presidential election in a bid to boost the
chances of Republican candidate Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.
Mainland France’s 47 million voters began casting their
ballots at about 70,000 polling stations around the country at 8am. Usually
reliable estimates of the result, based on a representative count of actual
votes cast, will be released as the last stations close at 8pm.
Voting got underway in France’s overseas territories on
Saturday, starting with Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, an archipelago near the
Canadian island of Newfoundland, and continuing in other far-flung overseas
territories and French embassies abroad.
Up to a quarter of the electorate is expected to abstain,
with some supporters of the centre-right candidate François Fillon and the
hard-left veteran Jean-Luc Mélenchon, both defeated in the first round on 23
April, saying they would not be voting for either candidate.
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