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French Presidential and Legislative Elections 2017-News and Updates

@Taygibay @Louiq XIV What do you think about Macron ? Are we underestimating him ? Can he create the surprise by getting to the second turn ?

Hi Vergennes,

Day after day his "en marche" is getting stronger. I now start to believe myself that he may indeed create the surprise.

He has a lot of visibility in the media at the moment and all flags are green for him but we still have more than 3 months before the first round.

After the result of the left primaries when all the candidates will start to compete together (nor fully started for now) we will see if Macron is solid or if he was just a "trend".

My opinion à 2 balles
 
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Any possibility of Benoit Hamon may pull off a surprise?

I've heard Macron is gaining popularity. What are his policies tho?

I still think it will eventually come down to Le Pen and Fillon.
 
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Any possibility of Benoit Hamon may pull off a surprise?

Polls are more like showing a fight between Valls and Montebourg,but we cannot rule out Hamon or any other candidate pulling off a surprise. Fillon was an outsider and he became the favourite. We don't know how many people will vote nor if they are all leftists and if they are voting just to eliminate one candidate.

I've heard Macron is gaining popularity. What are his policies tho?

How Emmanuel Macron plans to change France

http://www.thelocal.fr/20161116/what-emmanuel-macron-wants-for-france

I still think it will eventually come down to Le Pen and Fillon.

It can be Le Pen-Fillon,like Macron-Le Pen or even Macron-Fillon,there will be months of campaign and anything can happen.
 
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Polls are more like showing a fight between Valls and Montebourg,but we cannot rule out Hamon or any other candidate pulling off a surprise. Fillon was an outsider and he became the favourite. We don't know how many people will vote nor if they are all leftists and if they are voting just to eliminate one candidate.



How Emmanuel Macron plans to change France

http://www.thelocal.fr/20161116/what-emmanuel-macron-wants-for-france



It can be Le Pen-Fillon,like Macron-Le Pen or even Macron-Fillon,there will be months of campaign and anything can happen.
Quite informative, monsieur.

Based on the article, Macron sounds like a likeable guy.
 
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Quite informative, monsieur.

Based on the article, Macron sounds like a likeable guy.

He seems to is,but as a minister did a pretty disastrous term with no major successful reforms (Maybe a part from the deregulation of French bus market.......) and who justified a tax hike of almost €50Bn for the households. (As Hollande's adviser) I wonder if people really forgot about this.
 
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[Left Primary]

According to the first estimates and results coming from the first polling stations,Benoît Hamon is leading while Manuel Valls is 2nd and Arnaud Montebourg the 3rd.

@Philia
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3.090 polling stations out of 7.520 ;

1- Benoît Hamon : 35.21%
2- Manuel Valls : 31,56%
3- Arnaud Montebourg : 18,78%
4- Vincent Peillon : 6,48%
5- François de Rugy : 3,49%
6- Sylvia Pinel : 2,1 %
7- Jean-Luc Bennahmias : 1,6 %
 
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So, it will be between Valls and Hamon in the second round. And according to polls Valls likely to win. Considering how far of the polls regarding elections have been lately, I guess Hamon has decent chances to win.

Valls would do terrible in the general election even if he wins the primary. Don't know about Hamon though. Although I would be surprised if any leftist/socialist candidate can manage to go to 2nd round of the general election.
 
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Hamon and Valls face off in final French left-wing primary debate

Socialist presidential hopeful Benoît Hamon’s idealist vision for France squared off against calls for pragmatism from former prime minister Manuel Valls as the two men debated on national television Wednesday night.




Hamon and Valls discussed jobs, clean energy, and religion in the final debate of France’s left-wing primary, four days ahead of their highly anticipated run-off poll, and three months before French voters pick their next president.

Careful to strike a cordial tone, the Socialist Party rivals nevertheless highlighted their differences in a debate that, among many issues, scrutinised their knowledge of English.

Asked “Do you speak English?” by a viewer following the debate online, Hamon – a one-time education minister under Valls – confidently said “yes”, repeating his answer when one of the moderators asked “fluently?”

Valls then visibly struggled with the question, offering a longer but less convincing answer: “Very bad, but I speak well Spanish”.

Hamon defends universal income

Valls accused Hamon of peddling “dreams” to voters, especially when it came to the campaign pledge to introduce a universal basic income in France – a project that involves giving all citizens a basic wage regardless of employment or wealth, and which has been blasted as prohibitively expensive.

“There is a difference between dreams and illusions, and a credible political programme. That’s what interests me and that’s what the French are going to base their decisions on,” Valls said.

Hamon nevertheless defended his universal income proposal, insisting that its gradual introduction would cost only 45 billion euros in the first year, not the 400 billion euros per year some have estimated the cost at once it is fully implemented.



A man who has been compared to British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and leftist US firebrand Bernie Sanders, Hamon hit back by questioning Valls’s left-wing credentials.

“The dreams you helped finance, were for those who already owned a lot,” he said, accusing Valls of giving tax breaks to businesses when in office, while raising income taxes on middle-class workers.

Hamon also repeated promises to massively invest in environmentally-friendly agriculture and clean energy, as well as to renegotiate European budget deficit rules that restrict public spending. “We can compromise with bankers, not with nature,” Hamon declared.

Back to burkinis

There was more friction between the two on the subject of secularism.

Valls accused his in-party rival of voting against a 2010 law that banned wearing Muslim veils that fully cover the face in public. Hamon, surprised, reminded Valls he was not a member of parliament at that time and therefore did not vote on the measure.

Hamon then chastised Valls for publicly supporting right-wing mayors who banned so-called burkinis from public beaches last summer, a move that was later declared unconstitutional by French courts.

Hamon and Valls face off in final French left-wing primary debate - France 24.png


Hamon, who was kicked out of Valls's government in 2014 for differences on economic policy, won the first round of the party primary vote on Sunday with 36 percent of votes. Valls came in second with 31 percent support.

Regardless of who wins Sunday's run-off, polls suggest neither candidate stands much chance of getting past the first round of France's April-May presidential election after five years of unpopular rule by President François Hollande.

http://www.france24.com/en/20170125...ary-debate-hamon-valls-dreams-socialist-party
 
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French presidential hopeful Fillon rejects allegations of wife's 'fake job'

Former French prime minister François Fillon said on Thursday he would stick to his presidential bid, rejecting press allegations that his wife drew a salary as his assistant but never actually worked.

fillon-tf1-m.jpg

© Pierre Constant, AFP | Presidential hopeful François Fillon poses prior to a broadcast interview at French TV channel TF1, on January 26, 2017, just outside Paris.



Fillon, who told TF1 television his two children also did work for him at some point when he was senator, added that his wife Penelope had worked for him since his first election in 1980.

Satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné reported this week that Penelope Fillon had been paid some 600,000 euros ($645,000) for many years of employment as a parliamentary assistant to Fillon, then as his replacement as a National Assembly lawmaker and also for work she did at a cultural journal.

The newspaper said its research had showed there was no evidence she had ever really worked.

Fillon said that was not true. His wife, he said, did work that included press reviews, proofreading his speeches and meeting people for him. During Thursday night's interview, he told TV host Gilles Bouleau he would "provide all the necessary proof" to the judge in charge of the investigation.

The shocking revelations prompted financial prosecutors on Wednesday to open a preliminary investigation into Penelope Fillon’s employment for “misuse of public funds”.

The scandal has thrown a monkey wrench into Fillon’s presidential campaign, which slammed the case as “completely unfounded”.

‘I didn’t hire my wife, I married my aide’

Unlike some countries, France does not prohibit members of its Senate or National Assembly from hiring relatives.

In 2014, French investigative website Mediapart revealed that at least 20 percent of MPs had immediate family members on their staff.

Up until then, lawmakers were not required to disclose payroll information. But a new rule passed by the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life that year made it a matter of public record.

The move outraged several politicians, who saw it as a witch hunt. “I didn’t hire my wife, I married my aide,” Claude Bartalone, president of the National Assembly, told Mediapart at the time.

'Not my natural habitat'

Yet even if Fillon is able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that his wife worked for him, there is still the issue of how much she was compensated.

French law limits members of the National Assembly to a maximum of five staff members, who are paid from a monthly budget of €9,561.

But according to Le Canard Enchaîné, Penelope Fillon sometimes earned upwards of €7,000 per month – or almost the entire budgeted amount – during the 14 years she worked on and off as her husband’s parliamentary aide.

The huge sums of money contrast starkly with her image as a quiet mother of four and supportive wife.

"I'm just a country peasant, this is not my natural habitat," Welsh-born Penelope Fillon told Britain’s Sunday Telegraph of life in Paris after her husband was appointed prime minister in 2007.

If the allegations prove to be true, it could hurt Fillon’s chances at winning France’s presidential election in May.

He is currently the frontrunner in the race, with recent polls putting him ahead of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, independent candidate Emmanuel Macron and the far-left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)


http://www.france24.com/en/20170126...s-wife-rejects-allegations-fake-job-elections
 
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