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Controversy, chaos and backstabbing have made France's presidential race anyone's to win. European correspondent Paul Waldie helps you make sense of what's happening in the lead-up to voting that begins on April 23

France hasn't seen a presidential election like this in decades, and the campaign has barely started.

Ever since President François Hollande announced in December that he wouldn't run for re-election, the field has been wide open for a successor. But with less than three months to go before voting begins on April 23, there's no clear favourite and the front-runners each have defects that have turned off many voters. Throw in a couple of scandals and some political backstabbing to make this one of the most unpredictable elections in modern French history. On Thursday, the pressure mounted on one of the front-runners, François Fillon, to drop out of the race because of a scandal involving allegations of improper payments to his wife, Penelope. Mr. Fillon denies any wrongdoing, but police are probing and some party veterans are openly suggesting he should step aside.

There's a lot riding on the outcome. The next president will have to deal with the country's anemic economy and stubbornly high unemployment. There are also Brexit talks looming, a refugee crisis that's far from over and Russian sabre-rattling on Europe's eastern borders. Not to mention an unpredictable president in the White House and the constant concern about terrorists striking France again.

French President François Hollande. STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Mr. Hollande's departure was hardly a surprise. He struggled mightily during his five-year term and his approval rating fell to a record low of just 4 per cent last fall. Now the country has to decide who will take over. It's a hard decision, made even tougher by the mishaps of the candidates themselves.

The leaders for the first round of voting in April – the National Front's Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron of En Marche! and Mr. Fillon of the Republicans – are in a virtual dead heat according to opinion polls, with Ms. Le Pen slightly in front. Trailing them is the Socialist Party candidate Benoît Hamon.

The race among them now is to make it to the second round a week later, where the top two face off in a showdown. The winner will be the next president. Here's a look at how the campaign is shaping up.


A few weeks ago, François Fillon, 62, seemed a shoo-in to win. Once dubbed "Mr. Nobody" by his rivals, Mr. Fillon came out of nowhere to take the Republican Party primary last November, defeating party veterans Alain Juppé, a former prime minister, and former president Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr. Fillon is hardly a newcomer to politics. First elected to the National Assembly in 1981 from his home region of Sarthe, he's held numerous cabinet posts and was prime minister under Mr. Sarkozy from 2007 to 2012.

Few took him seriously during the Republican primary, but his promise to radically overhaul the economy, reform the country's rigid labour laws and cut nearly 500,000 civil servants went down well with conservatives. And his tough stand on radical Islam and immigration brought praise from traditional Catholics, who make up a potent voting force. It looked almost certain that this devoted Catholic and race-car enthusiast – he lives near the Le Mans race track – could win over centre-right Socialists and siphon off votes from the National Front.

But then scandal hit.

Penelope Fillon is shown on Feb. 26, 2013. JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

A satirical newspaper called Le Canard

Enchainé

revealed that during Mr.

Fillon’s

long tenure in government he put his wife, British-born Penelope, and the couple's two children on the government payroll as assistants. The paper said

Ms

.

Fillon

received roughly $1.2-million over 15 years and the children a total of about $118,000. But there are questions about whether they did any work and police have been called in to investigate possible fraud. Mr.

Fillon

has insisted he did nothing wrong and maintained that his wife and children performed valuable services. But the scandal has dented his claim of being an honest, transparent politician and he has fallen to third in most polls. The party is scrambling to figure out what to do and some members are urging Mr.

Juppé

and Mr.

Sarkozy

to get ready to jump in if Mr.

Fillon

has to stand down.


Rich, good-looking, smart and married to his former high school drama teacher, Emmanuel Macron is hardly a typical candidate for president. The 39-year-old ex-banker has never been elected and he's running as an independent, something unheard of at this level of politics in France. An outstanding student and accomplished pianist, Mr. Macron graduated from the country's elite National School of Administration, or ENA, in 2004 and briefly joined the upper ranks of the civil service. He left a couple of years later for an investment banking job at Rothschild & Cie Banque in Paris.

In 2012, Mr. Hollande recruited him to become a special adviser in an effort to burnish the government's woeful business credentials. Mr. Macron soon became economy minister and he embarked on a series of labour reforms and budget-cutting measures. But he resigned last August amid growing rancour among Mr. Hollande's Socialist colleagues. By then Mr. Macron had launched a movement called En Marche! promising a new vision for France.

He has campaigned as an outsider, claiming to be neither left nor right. He's also ardently pro-Europe, supports immigration and doesn't shy away from his elitist background (his parents were doctors). He's promising to ease France's rigid labour laws, cut taxes, increase social housing, extend library hours and introduce a new culture pass for all adults to give them access to museums and galleries. But critics say he has been light on details and is little more than a chouchou, or pet, of the media, which routinely runs pictures of Mr. Macron and his wife, Brigitte Trogneux, who is 63. There have also been allegations he used government money while in cabinet to launch En Marche!, something he has vigorously denied.

The couple are certainly good fodder for tabloids, too. Mr. Macron fell in love with Ms. Trogneux in high school in Amiens. He was a 15-year-old student and she was his 39-year-old drama teacher, and a married mother of three. He moved to Paris for his final year of school but they kept in touch and she eventually divorced her husband and married Mr. Macron in 2007.


One look at Marine Le Pen's campaign posters and it's hard to tell she's even a member of the National Front, let alone the daughter of party's founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen. The posters simply read "Marine Présidente." It's a sign of how far Ms. Le Pen, 48, has gone in trying to soften the party's image since becoming leader in 2011.

Marion Marechal-Le Pen attends a rally against pro-refugee demonstrators on Oct. 23, 2016. BERTRAND LANGLOIS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

She no longer uses the inflammatory language of her father, who became notorious for anti-Semitic tirades and rants against immigrants. Indeed, she has banished Mr. Le Pen from the party and clashed with her niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, who has become a right-wing political figure in her own right. The two recently sparred over abortion, with Ms. Maréchal-Le Pen pushing for tighter restrictions and Ms. Le Pen moving the party away from such talk and largely accepting the state-supported system.

Ms. Le Pen has also dropped the party's long-held backing of capital punishment, saying she now supports longer prison sentences instead. She's also offered policies on food safety and environmental protection, including supporting France's ban on fracking and encouraging the development of alternative forms of energy. To be sure, at the core of the National Front is a stridently France-first agenda. That includes pursuing a so-called Frexit to pull the country of the EU, dropping the euro and much tighter border controls. She has also pledged to raise the minimum wage and lower the retirement age.

Like Mr. Fillon, Ms. Le Pen has been caught up in an expenses scandal. The European parliament has said that Ms. Le Pen, who is a member of the European Parliament, used $421,000 in parliamentary funding for her MEP office to pay National Front staff. She has refused to pay the money back, alleging a conspiracy, and the parliament plans to dock half her salary.

For now, Ms. Le Pen's campaign strategy seems to be working and she leads in most polls. But polls also show she would be badly beaten by Mr. Macron or Mr. Fillon in a runoff.


These are tough times to be a socialist in France. Just five years ago the Socialist Party held the presidency, controlled both houses in parliament and had a majority in most of France's regional legislatures. Now the party is on the verge of being wiped out. The Socialist standard-bearer in the presidential race is Benoît Hamon, a former education minister who hails from the far left of the party.

He surprised many by defeating former prime minister Manuel Valls in the primary with a promise to bring the party back to its socialist roots. Mr. Hamon, 49, is offering a guaranteed annual income to all French adults, legalization of marijuana and taxing work done by robots. But critics call his ideas utopian and say the country could never afford the universal income proposal, which could cost more than $400-billion annually.

Mr. Hamon is a Bernie Sanders-type rebel within the party, having been ejected from cabinet after defying Mr. Hollande's adoption of a pro-business agenda in 2014. But he faces some formidable opponents on the left, none bigger than Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 65, a hard-left MEP who founded a political movement called Unsubmissive France. Mr. Mélenchon is a dynamic campaigner who promises a "citizens' revolution" with higher taxes on the wealthy, withdrawing from NATO and pulling out of the EU unless it changes fundamentally. Polls show Mr. Hamon will have a tough time finishing ahead of Mr. Mélenchon, leaving the Socialists even more disillusioned.


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