Banker, economic adviser and now youngest French president

PARIS — Emmanuel Macron has been a star student, a champion of France's tech startup movement, an investment banker and economy minister.

But the man who will become France's youngest president has never held elected office. After a campaign based on promises to revive the country through pro-business and pro-European policies, the 39-year-old centrist independent defeated far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen and her protectionist, anti-immigration party.

In his victory speech, Macron vowed to "rebuild the relationship between Europe and the peoples that make it." He pledged to open a new page for France based on hope and "restored confidence."

It won't be his first experience in the challenge of reforming France.

He quit his job as a banker at Rothschild to become Socialist President Francois Hollande's economic adviser, working for two years by Hollande's side at the presidential palace.

Then as economy minister in Hollande's government from 2014 to 2016, he promoted a package of measures, notably allowing more stores to open on Sundays and evenings and opening up regulated sectors of the economy.


Opponents on the left accused him of destroying workers' protections. Tens of thousands of people poured into the streets for months of protests, and the government had to force the law through parliament under special powers.

Last year, Macron launched his own political movement, En Marche, or In Motion, and quit the Socialist government. He promised to shake up the political landscape by appointing a government that includes new figures from business and civil society.

His next challenge will be to get a parliamentary majority in an election next month to make major changes — with no mainstream party to support him.

The strong advocate of a free market and entrepreneurial spirit has called for France to focus on getting benefits from globalization rather than the protectionist policies advocated by the far right.

In his political rallies, he encouraged supporters to wave both the French tricolor and the European Union flags.

Le Pen, who has tapped into working-class anger at the loss of jobs and once-secure futures, called him the face of "the world of finance," the candidate of "the caviar left."

"I'm not under control of the banks. If that was the case, I would have kept working for them," Macron answered.

Macron had an unexpected test of his political skills following the first round of the vote during what became known as "the battle of Whirlpool," when Le Pen upstaged him at a Whirlpool factory in Amiens that is threatened with closure.

Le Pen's surprise appearance put him on the defensive and prompted him to meet with angry Whirlpool workers later the same day. He was whistled and booed when he first arrived. But he stood his ground, patiently debating workers in often heated exchanges about how to stop French jobs from moving abroad.

In a country shaken by recent terror attacks, he pledged to boost the police and military as well as the intelligence services and to put pressure on internet giants to better monitor extremism online.

To improve Europe's security, he wants the EU to deploy some 5,000 European border guards to the external borders of the bloc's passport-free travel zone.

Macron did not campaign alone: His wife was never far away. Brigitte Macron, 24 years his senior, is his closest adviser, supporting him and helping prepare his speeches.

Macron and his wife have publicly described how their unusual romance started — when he was a student at the high school where she was teaching in Amiens in northern France. A married mother of three at the time, she was supervising the drama club. Macron, a literature lover, was a member.

Macron moved to Paris for his last year of high school.

"We called each other all the time. We spent hours on the phone, hours and hours," Brigitte Macron recalled in a televised documentary. "Little by little, he overcame all my resistances in an unbelievable way, with patience."

She eventually moved to the French capital to join him and divorced. They married in 2007. Emmanuel Macron says he wants to formalize the job of first lady, adding "she has her word to say in this."

Following his victory speech in the courtyard of the Louvre, his wife appeared on stage by his side, with tears in her eyes.

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AP video journalist David Keyton contributed to the story.

source: philstar.com

Bettors putting money on underdog Le Pen

PARIS — The Latest on France's presidential runoff on Sunday between centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen (all times local):

4:50 p.m.

The British-based betting firm Ladbrokes says far-right candidate Marine Le Pen is attracting 90 percent of the bets on the eve of the French presidential election, as people gamble that France is in line for an upset.

The betting firm said yesterday despite the polls favoring her centrist rival, Emmanuel Macron, gamblers are putting money on the idea that France may be in line for a political shock similar to Britain's decision to leave the European Union or Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election.

Le Pen's odds are 6-1. Macron is at 1-10 odds.

Nicola McGeady of Ladbrokes says with "so many political upsets in recent times, we are not surprised to see punters ignoring the polls. Le Pen is attracting the weight of money."


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3:50 p.m.

France's election campaign commission says "a significant amount of data" has been leaked on social networks following a hacking attack on centrist presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron's campaign some 36 hours before voting starts in Sunday's runoff.

The commission says yesterday the data leaked apparently came from Macron's "information systems and mail accounts from some of his campaign managers." The watchdog says the leaked data has been "fraudulently" obtained and that fake news has probably been mingled in with it.

It urged French media and citizens "not to relay" the contents of the leaked documents "in order not to alter the sincerity of the vote."

French electoral laws impose a blackout yesterday and most of Sunday on any campaigning and media coverage seen as swaying the election.

Macron is seen as the favorite going into Sunday's runoff against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.

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11 a.m.

Voting in the French presidential runoff has begun in France's overseas territories amid a nationwide blackout on campaigning and media coverage that could sway voters' views. It moves to the mainland on Sunday.

The first French territory involved in the early voting was Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, an archipelago located near the Canadian island of Newfoundland, where polling stations opened yesterday morning.

Early voting in other far-flung French overseas territories and French embassies abroad was expected later in the day.

In the presidential runoff, voters are choosing between centrist Emmanuel Macron's business-friendly, pro-European vision and far-right Marine Le Pen's protectionist, closed-borders view that resonates with workers left behind by globalization.

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10 a.m.

France's election campaign watchdog is investigating a hacking attack and document leak targeting presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron that his political movement calls a last-ditch bid to disrupt Sunday's tense runoff vote.

Fears of hacking and campaign interference have simmered throughout France's high-stakes, closely watched campaign — and boiled over Friday night as Macron's team said it had been the victim of a "massive and coordinated" hack.

His political movement said the unidentified hackers accessed staffers' personal and professional emails and leaked campaign finance material and contracts — as well as fake decoy documents — online.

The perpetrators remain unknown. It's unclear whether the document dump would dent Macron's large poll lead over far-right rival Marine Le Pen going into the vote.

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6 a.m.

The French presidential campaign has been unusually bitter, with voters hurling eggs and flour, protesters clashing with police and candidates insulting each other on national television — a reflection of the widespread public disaffection with politics.

Marine Le Pen, 48, has brought her far-right National Front party, once a pariah for its racism and anti-Semitism, closer than ever to the French presidency, seizing on working-class voters' growing frustration with globalization and immigration. Even if she loses in Sunday's runoff, she is likely to be a powerful opposition figure in France's parliamentary election in June.

On Sunday she faces 39-year-old centrist Emmanuel Macron, who also helped upend France's traditional political structure with his wild-card campaign.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Friday, Le Pen said, win or lose, "we changed everything."

Many voters, however, don't like either Le Pen or Macron. They fear her party's racist past while worrying that his platform would demolish worker job protections.

source: philstar.com

Le Pen and Macron clash in no holds-barred debate in France

PARIS — The only face-to-face televised debate between France's presidential candidates turned into an uncivil, no-holds-barred head-on clash of styles, politics and personalities Wednesday.

Emmanuel Macron called his far-right opponent Marine Le Pen a "parasite" who would lead the country into civil war. She painted the former banker as a lackey of big business who is soft on Islamic extremism.

Neither landed a knockout blow in the 2½-hour prime-time slugfest — but not for lack of trying. The tone was ill-tempered from the get-go, with no common ground or love lost between the two candidates and their polar opposite plans and visions for France. Both sought to destabilize each other and neither really succeeded.

For the large cohort of voters who remain undecided, the debate at least had the merit of making abundantly clear the stark choice facing them at the ballot box Sunday.

Neither candidate announced major shifts in their policy platforms. They instead spent much of their carefully monitored allotments of time attacking each other — often personally.

Le Pen's choicest barb came as she argued that Macron, if elected, would be in the pocket of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "Either way France will be led by a woman; either me or Madame Merkel," she said derisively.


Macron gave as good as he got and, at times, got the upper hand with his pithy slights. In the closing minutes, he used a sharp-tongued monologue to target one of Le Pen's biggest vulnerabilities: her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the extreme-right former presidential candidate repeatedly convicted for hate speech and who founded her party, the National Front.

Throughout, Macron portrayed Marine Le Pen as an empty shell, shaky on details and facts, seeking to profit politically by stirring up hatred and the anger of French voters — a dominant theme of the campaign — without feasible proposals. He called her "the high priestess of fear."

"Your project consists of telling the French people, 'This person is horrible.' It's to cast dirt. It's to lead a campaign of lies and falsifications. Your project lives off fear and lies. That's what sustains you. That's what sustained your father for decades. That's what nourished the extreme right and that is what created you," Macron said. "You are its parasite."

"What class!" Le Pen retorted.

One of the most heated exchanges was on terrorism — a top concern for Le Pen's voters and many French in the wake of repeated attacks since 2015. Saying that Islamic extremists must be "eradicated," Le Pen said Macron wouldn't be up to the task.

"You won't do that," she charged.

Saying France's fight against terror would be his priority if elected, Macron countered that Le Pen's anti-terror plans would play into extremists' hands and divide France.

"The trap they're setting for us, the one that you're proposing, is civil war. What the terrorists expect is division among ourselves. What the terrorists expect is heinous speech," Macron said.

Sitting opposite one another at a round table, the debate quickly became a shouting match. She had piles of notes in colored folders, and referred to them occasionally. His side of the table was sparser, with just a few sheets of paper. He at times rested his chin on his hands as she spoke, fixing her in his gaze and smiling wryly at her barbs.

They clashed over France's finances, its future and their respective proposals for tackling its ills. He scoffed at her monetary plans, saying reintroducing a franc for purchases within France but allowing big firms to continue using the shared euro currency that Le Pen wants to abandon made no sense.

She dismissed his economic proposals with sweeping critiques and bristled at his suggestions that she didn't understand how finance and business work.

"You're trying to play with me like a professor with a pupil," she said.

They also clashed over foreign policy. Macron said he wants to work with U.S. President Donald Trump on intelligence-sharing, at the United Nations and on climate change. He spoke less favorably of Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying on many subjects "we don't have the same values and priorities."

"We have no reason to be in a cold war with Russia," Le Pen said.

He said that her election would harm France's image abroad, charging: "The world won't look favorably on us."

While Macron was borderline patronizing at times, she sought — but failed — to make it seem like he has trouble controlling his temper, which stayed fairly even throughout.

"You're interrupting me about every 10 seconds. I sense you're a bit exasperated," she said.

The debate offered risk and reward for both. A major trip-up or meltdown beamed direct into the homes of millions of electors could have dented their presidential ambitions in the closing stages of the intense campaign that has already steered France into uncharted territory. The first round of voting on April 23 eliminated mainstream parties from the left and right and propelled the 39-year-old Macron, who has no major party backing, and the 48-year-old Le Pen into the winner-takes-all runoff on Sunday.

Trailing in polls, Le Pen needed but failed to land a knockout blow in the debate to erode the seemingly comfortable lead of Macron, the front-runner who topped round one, nearly three points ahead of Le Pen.

For Macron, the priority was to prevent Le Pen from making up ground in the race's final days. Mission accomplished.

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Associated Press writers Elaine Ganley and Sylvie Corbet contributed to this report.

source: philstar.com