French election rivals macron and le pen reform their images
French election rivals french presidential election: France it’s the final stage of campaigning in the race for the presidency which will be settled on Sunday millions of voters will choose between the incumbent Emmanuel macron and his rival marine le pen two candidates faced each other on Wednesday night in a nationally televised debate after which many french voters are still said to be undecided our Europe editor Katya Adler has been taking the temperature for this weekend could this be France’s next president marine le pen patriotic woman of the people visiting
Frances forgot villages or far-right nationalists hiding behind a carefully reinvented softer image how radical are you i asked I’m not radical sorry I’m running for president to establish a government of the people for the people giving back power to the people but these people and plenty of others in France remain unconvinced so close to the emotions of the election are running high it’s always like this on campaign trail le pen there are protectors press and protesters wherever you look marine le pen remains
the outsider in this election but her popularity has grown she’s focused on voter’s number one concern the spiraling cost of food and fuel here marine le pen goes to markets to meet working people like us she’s down to earth we’ve always liked her Marilyn le pen even if she tries to distance herself from the extreme right that’s her background that’s her party and voting macron to keep le pen out in fact both presidential candidates have a reputation problem EU obsessed and elitist is how Emanuel my car’s critics ??French election rivals??
describe him so at this campaign event in marseille he ditched the designer jacket and appealed across party lines to vote for him on Sunday the 24th of April is a referendum for or against the environment for or against young people this election can be the start of a new french and European era of great hopes and ambitions Brussels and Washington are watching all this extremely carefully, especially with the raging Russia Ukraine crisis France has the EU’s biggest military its second-largest economy matcom wants to use
that to boost EU nato and transatlantic relations le pen is euro and u.s skeptic with traditionally close ties to Moscow who becomes France’s next president is as important abroad as it is at home for a number of reasons marine le pen’s program would directly lead to a total collapse of the French economy which would hurt the other European countries also a very important economic partner which is the UK marine le pen defends her economic plans but France’s next president she or he won’t be able to claim the heart of#French election rivals#
all french people this is a divided country Katya let’s go to Paris now and talk to our correspondent Hugh Schofield here we’re entering the final hours how are we expecting the candidates to spend their day well we know that uh marina Penn is up in her heartland in the north of the country she had the last rally at a place called as last night and she’ll be doing more markets what///French election rivals////
she’s spent her the last couple of weeks doing um meeting supporters she tends to go to places where she knows she’s popular to avoid those protests which Katya is referring to and uh the president will be down in Kijak in the lot department in the southwest um doing one of his kind of uh civic meetings where he talks and gets people to ask him questions so they’re both out campaigning right to the last minute I mean the polls are fairly clear they show that the president is way ahead of Emanuel macron
but both know uh that there’s a big unknown in all of this which is abstention um and if abstention is high and the turnout is low then that could change the numbers and make a le pen presidency more likely no one really knows but they’re both out um and will be continuing right to the end of today to encourage those voters who went for other candidates in the first round in particular the
left uh jean-luc melanchol who came a close third in the first round race two weeks ago to turn out and vote for them it looks like most of Bangladesh voters will who are going to vote will vote for macron some will vote for le pen but an awful lot of them are just going to abstain and it’s them in particular that both candidates.##French election rivals##
