French Presidential: Marine Le Pen suspends her campaign to collect sponsorships
Marine Le Pen, candidate of the French far-right National Rally (RN) party in the presidential election in Paris, February 17, 2022. AFP - THOMAS SAMSON
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
Less than two months before the first round of the presidential election in France, the candidate of the National Rally (RN) has only collected 393 sponsorships from local elected officials out of the 500 sponsorships needed to run.
Prime Minister Jean Castex called on elected officials on Tuesday to sponsor the candidates.
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His school program will wait, his trip to the Somme is postponed.
Marine Le Pen now spends part of her days on the phone.
The countdown has started: about forty signatures are still missing according to a party executive.
“
We are forced to prostitute ourselves to be a candidate
”, denounces a close friend of Marine Le Pen, “
outraged
” to see his candidate thus interrupting his campaign to collect signatures.
Another elected RN recounts having called dozens of mayors without any of them wanting to sponsor a single candidate, for fear of reprisals from the Communities of Communes, reports
Julien Chavanne
, from the political department of RFI.
Providing sponsorship "
is not automatically synonymous with political support
", recalled Prime Minister Jean Castex on Tuesday, calling on elected officials to "
provide their sponsorship
" to presidential candidates.
The head of government also indicated that he was going to receive all the associations of local elected officials on Thursday morning, as well as the presidents of the National Assembly and the Senate in order to "
discuss this situation together with respect for the freedom for everyone
", "
because there is a deeply democratic subject
".
The call from the head of Jean Castex to the mayors comes too late for an adviser to Marine Le Pen who is surprised at the silence of Emmanuel Macron.
"
He prefers to play the junk Nobel Prizes in Ukraine rather than take care of our democracy
", attacks this member of the first circle.
Marine Le Pen is expected to resume her campaign next week with a visit to the Agricultural Show.
By then, she will chain two major programs on France 2, between several phone calls.
And time is running out, candidates have until March 4 to find the 500 sponsorships.
In addition to Marine Le Pen, two other candidates credited with more than 10% of the voting intentions in the polls remain below the fateful bar: the Insoumis Jean-Luc Mélenchon (442 signatures) and the Reconquest candidate!
Eric Zemmour (350).
► To read also: Presidential 2022: the sponsorship battle rages
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Presidential France 2022
Marine Le Pen
France
French politics