Le Pen appeals to “patriots” on all sides, Macron defends renewable energies

Victory “has never been so close”: Marine Le Pen launched Thursday in Avignon an appeal to “patriots on the right, patriots on the left” to “block” Emmanuel Macron during the second round of the presidential election. The president-candidate addressing himself for his part in Le Havre to the ecological fiber of the voters.

It was the first major meeting between the two rounds for the far-right candidate, two days before an important rally in Marseille for the president-candidate. Objectives for the two finalists, to widen their base of the first round by attracting in particular the voters of rebellious leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon (21.95% of the votes).

In front of 4,000 supporters, according to the organizers, waving tricolor flags and chanting “Marine president”, Marine Le Pen called to “block” Emmanuel Macron and “this caste which governs us with arrogance”, presenting herself as the candidate of ” people against the oligarchy”.

As if echoing the calls of the Macron camp to “block” the far right, which has never been so close to coming to power under the Fifth Republic.

The polls for the time being give a victory for the outgoing president on April 24, between 53 and 55% of the vote. In 2017, he sharply beat Marine Le Pen with nearly 64% of the vote.

– “Globalist vision” –

“Patriots on the right, patriots on the left or elsewhere, I say (…) our only party is France”, launched Marine Le Pen, red jacket, in front of three French flags.

According to opinion polls, around 80% of former polemicist Éric Zemmour’s voters could put a Le Pen ballot in the ballot box on April 24, compared to around 20% for voters who voted for Mélenchon.

Promising a “French Spring”, if elected, after a “quinquennium which will have divided, despised, hurt”, she opposed the “globalist vision” of the outgoing president to his “national vision”, the “popular bloc against the bloc elite”.

She took up a terminology of the political scientist Jérôme Sainte-Marie, very listened to by the extreme right.

Developing the main themes of her program, she placed particular emphasis on mobilization, her young and popular electorate often being inclined to abstain.

“Here we are almost at the end of the road”, she assured from her desk where was written “if the people vote, the people win”.

– “Ecology of progress” –

A little earlier in the afternoon in Le Havre, a city led by its former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, Emmanuel Macron devoted his entire trip to renewable energies, which he wants to develop together with nuclear power.

By particularly defending the wind turbines so hated by its far-right rival.

“Getting out of renewables is a complete aberration, we would be the only country in the world to do so”, protested the president-candidate on France Bleu. “In Madame Le Pen’s project, with astonishment, I discovered (…) that we would spend hundreds of millions of euros to dismantle existing wind turbines”.

He said he believed in “the ecology of progress” which “reconciles industry, employment and ecology”, by investing 10 billion euros a year in it if he is re-elected.

“I will try to convince all the voters,” he added, multiplying the crowd all day. And thinking in particular of those of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who came out on top in the first round in Le Havre, and the ecologist Yannick Jadot.

Emmanuel Macron thus wanted to recall his points of agreement with the left on ecology. “With the project of Mr. Jadot, of Mr. Mélenchon and it is also true for Mrs. (Anne) Hidalgo (PS), we had an agreement on the fact that the Paris Agreement should be our framework, and the Green European deal”.

“But Mrs. Le Pen’s extreme right has a project which is to get out of the Paris Agreements and the European Green Deal”, according to him.

“I’m not going to propose Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s or Yannick Jadot’s project tomorrow. But if I can add such and such a thing, out of respect, if I find consistency with mine, I will do it”, he said. he rocks.

According to opinion polls, around 30% of Mr. Mélenchon’s voters could vote for Macron in the second round and around 60% of those who voted for the environmentalist candidate.

Purchasing power, pension reform, diplomacy and European construction, wind turbines: the outgoing president and the far-right candidate defend radically different projects and go blow for blow during an electric campaign.

“This time, this strategy of + everything except Le Pen + no longer works, partly because it has become demonized, partly because we have to convince people,” explained on RFI a close friend of the President, Roland Lescure.

Finally, in the evening, former President François Hollande called for a vote For Emmanuel Macron, his former minister.

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