French press review 29 April 2017

Campaigns for next week's second round French Presidential elections continue to dominate the front pages with the landmark vote now just 7 days away.

The attention of the commentators focuses this morning on the desperate drive by the Nation Front's Marine Le Pen and poll front-runner Emmanuel Macron to win over large numbers of undecided voters.

But their attention is polarized by Madame Le Pen's courting of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, flag bearer of the "Unbowed" Movement who came fourth in the race with 19.6 percent after an impressive campaign.

Le Monde insists that the floodlights ought to instead remain focused on Marine Le Pen’s bid to put a lid on the controversial Holocaust remarks made by the National Front's new leader Jean-Francois Jalkh. He was forced to resign, barely four days in the position after he allegedly praised the work of a convicted Holocaust denier.

The democratic process, according to Le Monde, requires parties and their leaders to face their history and not try to conceal it from voters like the National Front is trying to do. And from the daily's point of view, the Jalkh affair is as such, very far from being a detail, as Marine Le Pen is trying to present it.

Some of Saturday's papers harshly criticize Jean Luc Mélenchon's refusal to endorse either of the two candidates, claiming that even if he ruled out voting for Le Pen, his ambiguous stance is in fact a "short ladder" offered to the national Front leader.

La République des Pyrénées says Mélenchon's "ni-ni"or none-of- the-above policy, unveiled after the release of the first round election results, has already boosted Marine Le Pen's presidential prospects by causing (in just one week) a 13-point decline, in the number of his voters who were inclined to vote for Macron.

Libération rejects the notion upheld by voters unwilling to make a clear choice in the election, that liberalism is to blame for the rise of the National Front and therefore that a vote for Centrist Macron would one day facilitate the far right party's accession to power. That, according to Libé, is a stunning display of foolishness, like the ostrich which buries its head in the sand when in danger.

Le Figaro says Mélenchon's strategy is aimed at keeping the 7 million voters who backed his bid so as to reap the dividends during upcoming parliamentary elections.

Le Républicain Lorrain, agrees, arguing that the "Unbowed" chief simply prefered to stick with his anti-system ideology in a tactical move to prevent cracks appearing in his newly created movement.

For La Montagne, Mélenchon would need to scalp Macron, the so-called spiritual son of “Hollandism” to be able to see through his dream of turning his "Unbowed" party the launching pad for the reconstruction of a new Left.

L'Est Républicain believes Emmanuel Macron is forewarned and fully aware by now of what is really in Jean-Luc Mélenchon's mind.