France's Fillon wins party backing after Juppe rules out election bid

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France's Fillon wins party backing after Juppe rules out election bid

By Sophie Louet and Claude Canellas

REUTERS

 

Francois Fillon, former French prime minister, member of the Republicans political party and 2017 presidential election candidate of the French centre-right reacts after delivering a speech in front of small business leaders in Puteaux, France, March 6, 2017. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

 

PARIS/BORDEAUX (Reuters) - Francois Fillon fought off a rebellion that had threatened to end his candidacy for the French presidency on Monday as party leaders swung behind the centre-right former prime minister despite allegations that he had misused public funds.

 

Hours after party heavyweight Alain Juppe ruled out challenging Fillon, the conservative Republicans' party leadership unanimously backed their beleaguered candidate, Senate leader Gerard Larcher said.

 

"The Republicans are united around Francois Fillon," Larcher told reporters, after telling fellow party officials behind closed doors: "The debate is over". The conservatives are re-launching Fillon's campaign, party chief Bernard Accoyer added.

 

Less than 50 days from the election, opinion polls show 63-year old Fillon - once the election frontrunner - crashing out in the first round. They also show an overwhelming majority of French wanted him to drop out of the election.

 

But despite growing calls within the party against his candidacy, challengers failed to convince Fillon to step down voluntarily and could not agree on an alternative candidate.

 

The allegations that he paid his wife lavishly from taxpayers' funds for doing little work as his parliamentary assistant have badly damaged Fillon and also rattled foreign investors who fear it could boost far-right leader Marine Le Pen's election chances. Fillon denies any wrongdoing.

 

The euro fell on Monday after Juppe announced he would not challenge Fillon.

 

"WHAT A WASTE!"

 

Juppe, a former prime minister like Fillon, said he had considered stepping in but decided against it because he felt his camp was too divided for him to be able to unite it.

 

"As for the right and the centre, what a waste!" Juppe said of his party's chances in the election.

 

Before the scandal, Fillon had been favourite to return the right to power against a backdrop of high unemployment and sluggish growth under Socialist President Francois Hollande.

 

But now his predicted poor showing in the first round on April 23 would leave centrist Emmanuel Macron to face Le Pen in a runoff on May 7. Macron, 39, a former investment banker who has never run for elected office, is forecast to win.

 

Polls have shown that Juppe, who is 71 and lost to the more right-wing Fillon in their party's primaries, would have made the second round comfortably.

 

They also indicated that Juppe would have beaten Le Pen more easily in the second round than Fillon, given his greater appeal to centrist voters opposed to the anti-euro, anti-European Union, anti-immigration stance of the National Front candidate.

 

"Francois Fillon... had a boulevard (to the presidency) in front of him," Juppe said in the city of Bordeaux. "The instigation of judicial investigations against him and his defence based on a supposed plot and political assassination have brought him to a dead end."

 

Fillon has complained of media and judicial bias against his candidacy that he says amount to a "political assassination".

 

Juppe's uncharacteristically harsh words for Fillon, whom he called obstinate for staying on, exposed the depth of frustration within France's mainstream political right, which has never failed in postwar history to reach the second round of a presidential election but is now forecast to do so.

 

But Fillon was unfazed, telling the emergency meeting of party officials: "It is time for everybody to get their act together and come back to their senses."

 

"I call on all women and men of good will to rally, to respect the message our voters sent during the primaries and to unite behind my candidacy, which is the only legitimate one," he said, according to a transcript of his speech.

 

Fillon revealed last week he was to be summoned by a judge later in March with a view to being put under formal investigation.

 

(Additional reporting by Emmanuel Jarry, Emile Picy, Brian Love, Adrian Croft; Writing by Ingrid Melander and Andrew Callus; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Gareth Jones)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-03-07

[Baerboxer]

As I understand it, and I'm not an expert on French constitutional law, but he is free to stand and if elected to the role of President the investigation being carried out must stop whilst he is in office.

 

So he might have created fictitious work and paid his wife and two children large sums of tax payers money, to do work that might or might not have existed or been carried out, that they might or might have been suitable qualified to do and without any formal selection process or contract of employment. Hmmm. Wonder of wifey and kids declared it correctly on their tax returns too?

 

And with all of this on-going he can still be elected to the highest office, and have the case put in abeyance,

 

Vive la France!

[Lannig]

This is pathetic. My own country is the laughing stock of the whole democratic world. In most places, he wouldn't be able to run for president of a ping-pong club. Yet this crook still wants to run the country. After wasting almost a million Euros of taxpayer's money for his own benefit and his children's, he'll telling us he's about to have each and every taxpayer tighthen his/her belt seriously and sabotage our public health system to save money.

 

I'm ashamed.

 

Le Pen isn't any better, but for some reason her electoral base is willing to forgive fake employment  so she still can use this to get more votes. Nothing rational in there.

Edited March 7, 2017 by Lannig

[Calach]

1 hour ago, Baerboxer said:

As I understand it, and I'm not an expert on French constitutional law, but he is free to stand and if elected to the role of President the investigation being carried out must stop whilst he is in office.

 

So he might have created fictitious work and paid his wife and two children large sums of tax payers money, to do work that might or might not have existed or been carried out, that they might or might have been suitable qualified to do and without any formal selection process or contract of employment. Hmmm. Wonder of wifey and kids declared it correctly on their tax returns too?

 

And with all of this on-going he can still be elected to the highest office, and have the case put in abeyance,

 

Vive la France!

 

If a candidate had to withdraw every time he was suspected of something, judges could just decide directly who is to be the next president. And he is suspected of abusing his parliamentary allowance (which they all do), not of selling State secrets to a foreign power. 

Edited March 7, 2017 by Calach