Annual May Day march gets abstentionist message
Patriot Jean-Marie Le Pen has urged his voters not to vote for anyone in the upcoming second round of the presidential elections, citing the fact that there is no real choice between the Socialist Segolene Royal and conservative Nicolas Sarkozy. The second round comes on Sunday.
Le Pen’s long-awaited anouncement came at the annual May Day rally the Front National holds at the Joan of Arc memorial in downtown Paris. Le Pen told a cheering crowd: “There are two candidates left in the game, both representing parties and policies that have brought France into the deplorable state where it is today. It would be illusory and dangerous to vote for the Socialist candidate to get revenge for the hold-up carried out on our program by Nicolas Sarkozy. I invite the voters who showed their confidence in me to give their vote neither to Madame Royal nor to Mr Sarkozy. I invite them to abstain massively.” Activists booed whenever Sarkozy’s name was mentioned, and chanted “We want Le Pen, not Segolene! We want Jean-Marie, not Sarkozy!”
Le Pen came in fourth in the first round of the elections despite heavy opposition in the courts, a total media offensive, and the efforts of smaller campaigns to draw off his vote.The highest hurdle for Le Pen was the “hold-up” he referred to: the co-option of his ideas, especially on immigration, that Sarkozy pulled off. Even Royal, to the anger of her ideologically-inclined leftist base, spoke out against political correctness and endorsed law and order measures to attempt to reign in Third World immigrant violence, which has made France an international laughing stock. Royal was running scared, mindful of the fact that her predecessor, Lionel Jospin, was knocked out of the first round in 2002 by Le Pen, thanks in large part to the politically-correct politics-as-usual line of the Socialists, costing them the remnants of their blue collar support. Sarkozy’s grand theft worked, with Sarkozy cutting in to much of the soft support Le Pen gained from upper-middle class and business people who had felt abandoned by earlier conservative politicians.
The idea of “principled abstention” is gaining currency in increasingly-sophisticated nationalist strategic circles, forcing conservatives (and even socialists) to pander to them instead of, as they usually do, to vocal special interests at the other end of the political spectrum. The tactic is an especially powerful one now, as large voter registration is forcing hopefuls to scramble.
Sarkozy, who had hoped for a Le Pen endorsement, attempted mixed pretended indifference with sour grapes in response to Le Pen’s announcement: “I’m not campaigning to get the vote of Jean-Marie Le Pen…” he claimed. Still, “I say to those people who voted for the National Front, as I do to those who voted for other parties, that I want to rally a very wide majority.” Sarkozy is only slightly ahead of Royal, and, despite the bravado, would benefit from the nearly 4 million votes Le Pen had.
Le Pen told the patriots that they would get their vengeance in June, at the legislative elections.
The annual Front National’s Grand Defile (“Grand March”) draws thousands of people on the workers’ May Day holiday. Le Pen long ago became the real voice of the French working class; the votes for all Marxist hopefuls in the first round put together were far below the total gained by Le Pen.
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