French weekly magazines review 30 April 2017

French commentators rush to endorse 39 year-old Macron as France's next President, despite a ferocious challenge from the Far-Right's Marine Le Pen in the rocky ride to Sunday's run-off vote.

DR

Right-wing publications such as l’Express and Le Point, consider Emmanuel Macron's election is a done deal. Even the left-leaning, New Observer l'Obs, tips him to defeat National Front leader Marine Le Pen, despite what it calls "possible slips on the last steps leading to the Elysée Palace".

"He won his bet and break-in" over the political class" headlines l'Express. According to the magazine, in just a few months in politics, the complete stranger converted a try, after shattering established patterns and longstanding traditions.

L'Express also vents its anger against conservative Presidential hopeful Francois Fillon for losing an election he was widely tipped to win. This, after his bid was "shot down" by a series of scandals he never admitted, preferring to drag the Center-Right alliance with him as he sank.

Le Canard Enchaîné says the main opposition Republican party is on the brink of implosion as a result of the historic defeat.

The satirical weekly reports that a factional war has also broken out in the ruling Socialist party after Benoît Hamon's catastrophic 6.3 percent.

Some of the party's chiefs, it says, have urged Hamon and his former back bench rebels to join the "Unbowed" movement. This is  while others are reportedly dancing on party's rubble, according to Le Canard.

The message from this week's magazines is that the traditional parties simply failed to understand the new social, economic and cultural divisions fracturing the country.

While the May 7 run-off is still a week away, Le Point describes Macron as the "little Prince" who looks set to begin the lonely journey into an exciting but dangerous era in French history.

Left-leaning Marianne presents him as a "bulwark" against Marine Le Pen's so-called attempts to divide the country between the destitute, the forgotten and pessimists backing Marine Le Pen and reform-minded optimists.

L'Express warns that France is witnessing a clash of civilizations between modernization, rational governance and hope-inspired France incarnated by Macron and populism and xenophobia driven by Marine Le Pen.

For Le Point it boils down to battle between market economics, Europe and a nation open to the world against Le Pen's protectionist and nationalistic agenda.

Marianne concludes with some advice for the young Emmanuel Macron. It urges him to first shed the perceived image of rich men's candidate he is identified with, and prove his capability to to build a stable parliamentary majority, indispensable to govern the country.