home straight, the Macron-Le Pen debate in the crosshairs

Last straight line for the two presidential finalists before the second round of April 24: Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen scrapped from a distance on Monday trying to destabilize the opponent, before the long-awaited big debate on Wednesday.

Nothing is played and if the president-candidate 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 adds further uncertainty.

After the Easter Sunday break, the far-right candidate returns to the field on Monday with her last trip on the agenda, to Saint-Pierre-en-Auge (7,500 inhabitants) in Calvados, before Wednesday’s debate evening. “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 do not 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, in this Normandy town where she came first on April 10 with nearly 35% of the vote, just over six points ahead of the outgoing president.

“I hope it won’t be what I’ve been hearing for a week, a succession of invectives, fake news, excesses,” she pleaded again. After a failed debate in 2017, Marine Le Pen believes she is better prepared.

“She must take time, arrive relaxed. The program, she masters it. She sees very well where Mr. Macron’s attacks will carry”, indicated the RN mayor of Perpignan Louis Aliot on France Inter. “The advantage of this second debate is that Mr. Macron is no longer in the same position. He has a record. It’s not going to be the same story”.

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 those around him.

– “Deep cleavage” –

Emmanuel Macron, for his part, 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 split with the far-right candidate, it’s 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” , declared the president-candidate to France Culture in an interview recorded on Friday and broadcast on Saturday.

“The implicit in Mrs. Le Pen’s approach is that basically, once elected, she considers that she is superior to the Constitution, since she may not respect it to change the rules, that it’s a break, and it’s serious”, pointed out Mr. Macron.

The RN candidate 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 France Inter the mayor RN of Perpignan: “It will be a parliamentary debate and, at that time, the choice will be made. But we need a policy which tends, small gradually, 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 (Var) David Rachline.

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