Le Pen’s ideas dominate debate in France
By Emma Vandore and Helene Fouquet
(Bloomberg)
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French National Front presidential candidate, said campaign frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy has helped his anti-immigration party by adopting its main ideas and “legitimizing us.”
“By taking on the themes of the National Front, Mr. Sarkozy has helped us,” Le Pen, 78, said today in an interview on RTL radio. “People say that Le Pen has been saying those things for a long time and he’s right. They will prefer the model to the copy.”
Le Pen’s comments come as the other two main candidates, Socialist Segolene Royal and Francois Bayrou, attack Sarkozy for courting National Front voters at the risk of increasing ethnic divisions. Le Pen, who reached the runoff in 2002 elections against Jacques Chirac, said yesterday he’d be able to work with Sarkozy if the former interior minister wins the May 6 election.
Sarkozy, head of the governing Union for a Popular Movement, said yesterday in an interview in Liberation newspaper he wants to attract National Front voters.He has proposed tightening immigration rules and establishing a Ministry for Immigration and National Identity.
In the daily Ipsos SA/Dell Inc. tracking poll today, Sarkozy added 0.5 point to 30 percent and Royal held at 24 percent. Bayrou slipped 1/2 point to 18.5 percent and Le Pen lost the same amount and stands at 13.5 percent. The margin of error is about 3 points.
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