Macron gains edge on presidential rivals as Ukraine war unfolds
French leader’s far-right rivals stumble over past
pro-Putin statements.
BY CLEA
CAULCUTT
March 1,
2022 4:00 am
PARIS — The
war in Ukraine has upset the French presidential campaign but in many ways it
has benefited the incumbent, Emmanuel Macron.
As the
French president engaged in another round of phone calls on Monday to try and
secure peace between Ukraine and Russia, his political opponents were left
watching from the sidelines.
Russia’s
assault on Ukraine is taking place just as Macron is expected to officially
announce his reelection bid, marking the start of the presidential campaign’s
final stretch. The French head to the polls on April 10 for the election’s
first round, but while his opponents have been campaigning for weeks and pushing
their policy proposals, Macron has kept his cards close to his chest, carefully
planning for a lightning-fast campaign.
It’s not
clear what the last weeks of the campaign will look like, as all camps have
been forced to change political strategies and cancel rallies because of the
war.
But recent
polls suggest the French president is gaining support as a result of the crisis.
A poll from Harris Interactive gave him 27 percent of the vote and another from
Ifop put him at 28 percent, around 10 percentage points ahead of the
far-right’s Marine Le Pen, currently polling in second place for the election’s
first round.
Insiders in
Macron’s rivals’ camps say they are finding it difficult to find angles of
attack on the French president.
“We can’t
attack Macron when he is in his role of representing France on the
international stage,” said Le Pen’s deputy campaign director Jean-Philippe
Tanguy. “In politics there is always a dose of theatrics, but when the
circumstances are so serious, we are not going to start petty controversies.”
Macron’s
lead in the polls occurred despite him having dramatically cut back his
domestic schedule, delegating visits to Prime Minister Jean Castex. On
Saturday, Macron spent a mere two hours at France’s leading agricultural show,
a required stop for presidential candidates.
Several
news organizations also reported on Monday that Macron’s first campaign rally,
in Marseille on Saturday, is likely to be cancelled.
The French
president has been striving to stay above the fray as political rivals vie for
a spot in the run-off against him — and things aren’t expected to change much,
even though Macron is due to announce his candidacy this week before the
official deadline for presidential bids.
“We won’t
be able to organize big, boisterous rallies that look ahead while a war is
going on,” a spokesperson for Macron’s party La République en Marche said. “The
tone [of the campaign] will be more solemn, less assertive, even if we still
want to campaign on the theme of France after the [COVID-19] crisis.”
In
opposition parties, the French president’s decision to put some campaigning
commitments on hold was welcomed through gritted teeth. “[Macron] is going to
use the war to avoid campaigning, much like he used the pandemic,” Tanguy said.
A Socialist
Party official said: “It means he can present himself as a father-of-the-nation
figure and even approach the election as a tacit renewal of his mandate.”
Failing
abroad, winning at home?
Just as
Vladimir Putin has brought the European Union together, so too has he given the
pro-European Macron fresh energy.
Europe’s
swift response to Russian aggression, including financial sanctions, the
closure of its airspace to Russian planes and the banning of broadcaster RT,
has put paid to accusations that the EU fails to take bold actions.
“You will
find nobody in the party who will say that there is anything positive about the
conflict in Ukraine,” warned the spokesperson for La République en Marche.
But, he
added, “[the war in Ukraine] vindicates our choices,” he said with reference to
the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU’s economic recovery plan and now the bloc’s
response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Europe is
the solution when it comes to health, to the economy, and now to defense.”
Macron’s
personal diplomatic endeavors to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine may
have failed — Macron’s high-profile visit to Moscow and multiple phone calls
with Putin have so far yielded nothing — but this appears not to matter, at
least in the short term, in France.
Meanwhile,
Macron’s opponents on the far-right who were riding high on Euroskepticism and
a renewal of nationalism in the public debate have been forced to U-turn on
their previous pro-Putin positions.
Le Pen has
in the past supported Russia’s annexation of Crimea, refused to call for the
release of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and said she admired Putin.
Last week,
the National Rally candidate admitted on French television that the conflict
“had partly changed her opinion of [Putin].”
“Western
standards are not the same as Russian values,” she said. “But what he has done
there is a blatant violation of international law and it’s completely
indefensible. We cannot justify his behavior.”
Eric
Zemmour, the surprise far-right candidate who upset polling predictions last
year with aggressive anti-EU, anti-immigration proposals, has been struggling
to find his footing in recent days as videos emerge of him hoping for a “French
Putin” or praising Putin as the “last resistance fighter against the storm of
political correctness.”
In the long
term, however, opponents believe the crisis in Ukraine might come back to bite
Macron.
“[The war]
makes everything opaque,” said a former minister from the opposition Les
Républicains party. “If there is a long war, it’s a failure for all the
protagonists and Macron is one of them.”
“Macron put himself forward [in negotiating with Putin] and nothing happened, even though he implied he had obtained something from Putin. The crisis will either crystalize support around Macron or against him if he is seen as having been agitating and ultimately
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