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French weekly magazines review 12 February 2017

There's no getting away from François Fillon this week, as the man who would be president features on every weekly front page. He's clearly in trouble. Just how deeply depends on which magazine you read, but nobody is particularly hopeful.

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One man dominates the covers of nearly all of France’s weekly magazines: François Fillon, the star-crossed right-wing presidential candidate who’s having a rough time of it.

Despite last week’s press conference, an open letter and campaign meetings across the country, it seems that Fillon is having difficulty getting back into his stride.

And the Le Canard Enchaîné weekly shows no intention of letting up on him. After all, it’s this paper which first reported the allegations that Fillon’s wife, Penelope, was paid thousands of euros for a possibly fake job as a parliamentary assistant.

This week Le Canard published new claims that Penelope Fillon received 45,000 euros in severance pay. The article entitled “Fifteen years of work and not a trace” poses the question: “No emails, no notes, no schedule. Not even a text message?”

Another article on the same subject says that Penelope’s payout is “much more efficient than going to the Job Office!”

The satirical weekly also sprinkles its articles with a handful of original nicknames: “Fillon the Transparent”, “Fillon the Virtuous” and even “Fillon the Crucified”.

There appears to be no Plan B

L’Express chooses a close-up of Fillon for its cover. Its more serious headline, “Bring an end to politicians’ privileges”, is accompanied by the subtitle: “The right looks for a plan B”.

The lead article says that some politicians are loyally defending Fillon through thick and thin but others are calling for him to drop out of the race.

This has conservative strategists considering the possibility of a “plan B”, which would mean finding a new rpresidential candidate. There was talk of replacing Fillon with Alain Juppé, the candidate who came in second in the right-wing primary.

But, as L’Express reminds us, Juppé “has repeated that he must not be counted on as a plan B”. So in the absence of a backup plan, conservatives will have to stick it out with Fillon, however battered and bruised he may be.

How much damage will the Fillon affair cause?

Left-leaning L’Obs gets a bit more cheeky with its cover.

The headline reads “Tartuffe: Will Fillon bring down the right?” Tartuffe here meaning “religious hypocrite”, in reference to a character from Molière, the 17th-century French playwright. In keeping with the theme, a 17th-century wig is photoshopped onto Fillon’s head.

In its main article, L’Obs looks at the conservatives who have called for Fillon to step down, and the infighting that has gone on behind the scenes of the French right since the scandal broke.

The article says that Fillon’s apology during his press conference earlier in the week “avoided an insurrection of his troops”. But it writes that Fillon dodged such an insurrection by the skin of his pants.

This because the right ultimately “realised there is no plan B”.

Tartuffe will be on stage for awhile longer before his exit cue.

François Fillon and the legacy of Philippe Séguin

The cover of centrist weekly M, le Magazine du Monde features a close-up of François Fillon. It’s an old photo, printed in black and white, of Fillon with Philippe Séguin, a former president of the National Assembly.

Why have a picture of Fillon with Séguin? Well, M argues, Séguin was a mentor of sorts to Fillon back in the 1990s. Séguin lost some important battles, including his bid for mayor of Paris, but he managed to weather the political storms of his career.

It may well be Séguin who “passed down his resistance in the face of adversity” to Fillon, the article writes. Which could explain why Fillon hasn’t given up already.

Is Marine Le Pen the only candidate with a clear run?

Left-leaning Marianne has a different cover, in that it features all the major presidential candidates, not just Fillon. Also pictured are centrist candidate and former economy minister Emmanuel Macron, Socialist Party candidate Benoît Hamon, far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon and National Front leader Marine Le Pen.

This with the headline “How they can make her win”. Her, of course, meaning Marine Le Pen.

The main article says that Le Pen could benefit from the division threatening the left and the Penelopegate scandal rocking the right.

With such a fractured political arena, Le Pen’s chances of winning more voters to her far-right party seem better than ever, according to the article.

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