Jean-Luc Mélenchon who is cultivating his hopes for the second round, Éric Zemmour calling himself "the only right-wing candidate", Yannick Jadot who offers himself a Zenith: the main presidential candidates began the final stretch of the campaign on Sunday with the objective of mobilizing in the meetings, two weeks before the first round, in which the president candidate Emmanuel Macron urged the French to participate.

The RN candidate Marine Le Pen, still given in the second round against him (17.5% according to a SopraSteria poll on Saturday), was heckled in Guadeloupe, where the recording of a television interview was disrupted by demonstrators.

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Always announced at the top of the voting intentions (28.5% according to SopraSteria), Emmanuel Macron said on France 3 "shocked" by this "totally unacceptable scene", while the spokespersons of Mrs Le Pen denounced the actions of "far left activists" who "josted rather violently" the candidate.

With this trip without a big meeting, Marine Le Pen has still worked on her refocusing, while the ever more radical proposals of her far-right competitor Éric Zemmour are helping to smooth her image.

On the eve of the official opening of the campaign, she also played the counter-programming, facing the meeting of Éric Zemmour at the Trocadéro in Paris, where the candidate Reconquête!, who ebbs around 10% in the polls and finds himself elbow-to-elbow with the LR candidate Valérie Pécresse, presented himself in front of several thousand people and dozens of French flags as the "only one to be on the right in this campaign".

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Under a bright sun, he described Valérie Pécresse as a "centrist, already ready to vote Emmanuel Macron" in the second round, and Marine Le Pen as a "socialist in economic matters", while the outgoing president could not, according to him, "still not what edge he is" despite wielding power.

"How long before France becomes an African France (...), before Islam becomes the majority on our land?", had previously launched at the podium his support Marion Maréchal, niece of Marine Le Pen.

"Second low-cost round"

On the left, the LFI candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, credited with 12 to 15% in the polls, which fuels his hopes of crossing the course of the first round, also gathered thousands of people, on the Prado beach in Marseille.

He warned against a "low-cost second round" between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.

"This time you feel like me, we don't know why, all of a sudden we said to ourselves + We're going to get there +, from all sides", he exclaimed.

At the Zenith in Paris, Yannick Jadot, who arrived by bike, attacked Emmanuel Macron who, according to him, "has never ceased to blow on the embers of the division" and to display his "contempt" for the weakest.

As for the far right, "it's chaos, hatred and pain. We are joy, equality, freedom, fraternity", launched the ecologist who intends to relaunch a campaign that is slipping (6 % in the polls).

Emmanuel Macron has continued to blow on the embers of division by scorning the yellow vests, the precarious, the measures of the citizens' convention for the climate, the Borloo report on the suburbs.

#ZenithJadot #Jadot2022 pic.twitter.com/625ZilB9Zl

— Yannick Jadot (@yjadot) March 27, 2022

At a meeting in Toulouse, the communist Fabien Roussel denounced the "common program" of "Macron, Zemmour, Le Pen" dictated, according to him, "by the Medef", believing that it was "time for cigars to change mouths" .

For candidate LR Valérie Pécresse (around 10% in the polls), sick with Covid-19, Sunday will, however, only be the occasion for a videoconference with activists at the end of the afternoon.

"Equity" or "inequality"

While the risk of a strong abstention hovers in the first round of April 10, Emmanuel Macron reminded the French that "the election is the best way to make your choices".

He will be back on the field on Monday, in Dijon, to silence critics accusing him of fleeing the debate, in a campaign suffocated by the Covid-19 crisis then crushed by the war in Ukraine.

The conflict was again invited in the interviews and meetings on Sunday.

A file which has forced all the candidates to position themselves for a month, while international subjects are traditionally far from the concerns of voters during a presidential election.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon dedicated his meeting on Sunday to "the fight for a ceasefire in Ukraine and the end of the Russian invasion", Yannick Jadot "welcomed the courage of President Zelensky in the face of war crimes".

I want to dedicate our gathering to the struggle for a ceasefire in Ukraine and for an end to the Russian invasion.

I do it with the requirement that involves us in a common destiny.

#MelenchonMarseille pic.twitter.com/kG7diJBWzO

— Jean-Luc Melenchon (@JLMelenchon) March 27, 2022

Shortly before, Emmanuel Macron had warned on France 3 against an "escalation of words and actions in Ukraine", after the remarks of American President Joe Biden who called Vladimir Putin a "butcher", and Marine Le Pen insisted again on the consequences of the war on the purchasing power of the French.

If the entry into force on Monday of the rigorous rules of the official campaign will put the 12 candidates on an equal footing in the media, those under 3% of voting intentions however still protested on Sunday.

"Equity is a clever word for inequality," said Nicolas Dupont Aignan (Debout la France) on France Inter, while Jean Lassalle (Résistons!) called for "resisting against this ferocious system which is a soft dictatorship", and Nathalie Arthaud (LO) denounced a broad "problem of pluralism" in society as a whole.

With AFP

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