- Mixed US car sales in Q3 as industry hopes for post-election bounce
- Thunderstorms are a 'boiling pot' of gamma rays, scientists find
- Scientists unlock secret of 'Girl With Pearl Earring'
- Dolphins flash friendly grins when they're ready to play
- Facing backlash, EU moves to delay deforestation rules
- US private sector adds more jobs than expected in September: ADP
- Boys out of critical condition after Zurich stabbings
- Spain logs record summer tourism as inflow draws protests
- Hedi Slimane quits as Celine's artistic director
- Oil prices extend rally on Iran attack
- Spain welcomed record number of tourists this summer
- France says coming tax hikes on the wealthy to be 'temporary'
- Why are Thailand's roads so deadly?
- Oracle to invest $6.5 bn in Malaysian cloud services region
- Parkrun marks 20 years of a free weekly jog, run... or walk
- Oil extends rally after Iran attack, Hong Kong soars again
- Prostitutes, prospectors drive spread in DR Congo mpox capital
- Oil extends rally after Iran attack, Hong Kong resumes surge
- Extreme heat another form of death sentence in Texas jails
- Can music help plants grow? Study suggests sound boosts fungus
- Nike earnings drop, says turnaround will take time
- US dockworkers launch mass strike a month before election
- Iron Dome: Israel's key anti-missile shield
- Cranes stand still as US dockworkers fight for 'future'
- GM reports US sales dip, but says EVs grew
- Sheinbaum takes office as Mexico's first woman president
- Webb telescope detects carbon dioxide on Pluto's largest moon
- Stock markets slump, oil jumps on Middle East concerns
- French PM vows more taxes and spending cuts ahead of budget fight
- Germany inaugurates IBM's first European quantum data centre
- Stock markets diverge as eurozone inflation drops further
- France's richest man takes control of Paris Match magazine
- Anger meets tear gas as Nigeria hardship protests fizzle out
- US dockworkers launch mass strike month before election
- Evacuations from Lebanon: what we know
- Feathers fly at Chanel's Paris fashion return
- UAE oil giant ADNOC swoops on German chemicals firm Covestro
- Eurozone inflation falls under 2% for first time since 2021
- Coldplay ticket scalping fiasco sparks backlash in India
- Droughts drive Spanish boom in pistachio farming
- Tokyo recovers some losses to lead Asian markets higher
- Rural schools empty in North Macedonia due to exodus
- US dockworkers launch strike after labor contract expires
- Thousands evacuated as Super Typhoon Krathon approaches Taiwan
- Kenya airport whistleblower fears for his life
- Sheinbaum to take office as Mexico's first woman president
- Scientists fear underfunded Argentina research on verge of collapse
- US port officials gird for strike despite last-minute bargaining
- With 118 dead from Hurricane Helene, Biden defends US government response
- Breeder who tried to create enormous trophy sheep jailed in US
RYCEF | 1.42% | 7.03 | $ | |
RBGPF | -2.18% | 59.5 | $ | |
CMSC | -0.04% | 24.76 | $ | |
SCS | -1.97% | 12.945 | $ | |
RELX | 0% | 47.34 | $ | |
RIO | 0.01% | 71.17 | $ | |
BCC | -0.32% | 140.94 | $ | |
NGG | -1.64% | 68.92 | $ | |
CMSD | -0.1% | 24.915 | $ | |
VOD | -2.26% | 9.73 | $ | |
JRI | -0.3% | 13.49 | $ | |
GSK | -2.04% | 39.495 | $ | |
AZN | 0.84% | 79.335 | $ | |
BCE | -1.28% | 34.39 | $ | |
BP | 0.36% | 32.205 | $ | |
BTI | -1.46% | 35.925 | $ |
French far-right clash in Riviera region ahead of polls
France's Mediterranean region, home to the Cannes Film Festival and palm-lined beaches that entice tourists from around the world, is seeing a ferocious battle between far-right factions for parliamentary polls this month with immigration the most contentious issue.
National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen and TV polemicist Eric Zemmour achieved some of their highest scores in the April presidential elections in the sun-kissed Provence-Alpes-Cote-d'Azur (PACA) region.
But behind the Mediterranean glitz, high immigration and unemployment rates along with an electorate that believes France's traditional right has lost its backbone make the region fertile ground for the far-right, experts say.
Paris-born Zemmour is standing in the constituency around Saint-Tropez, a famous resort town where Le Pen scored 24.1 percent and Zemmour 22.42 percent in the first round of the presidential vote.
Around 150 mostly retired locals and holidaymakers gathered around Zemmour as he held a meeting between the seafront and a petanque area in the coastal town of Le Lavandou on Friday.
The pundit-turned-politician drew cheers as he blamed local youths of North African origin for the chaotic scenes that marred the Champions League final between Real Madrid and Liverpool in Paris on May 28.
"What happened at the Stade de France is of course the consequence of the great replacement," Zemmour told supporters, referencing a conspiracy theory according to which white Europeans are being replaced by immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.
"We were humiliated in front of the whole world. We need change," 84-year-old Jacques, who did not want to give his surname, told AFP.
- 'Nip in the bud' -
Zemmour ended up with just seven percent in the first round of the presidential election, far below his ambitions, while Le Pen finished runner up, losing to President Emmanuel Macron in the second round with 41.45 percent.
Their electorate is different, said Virginie Martin, a political scientist from Kedge Business School.
"Eric Zemmour's electorate is clearly more bourgeois and Marine Le Pen's is more working class," Martin said, adding they also had voters in common.
Zemmour had pushed for a parliamentary election alliance between his Reconquest party and the RN. But Le Pen has sought to distance herself from the 63-year-old convicted three times for inciting racial hatred.
"The RN's strategy is to nip Reconquest in the bud, because they are a direct challenge," said Felicien Faury, who has a doctorate in political science from Paris Dauphine University.
Acting RN president Jordan Bardella, 26, held a rally on Saturday in the Vaucluse area, where Zemmour's 23-year-old protege Stanislas Rigault is running for MP.
"It's a shame to campaign against Reconquest when there are clearly other opponents," Thomas Nasri, part of Eric Zemmour's campaign team, told AFP after the meeting at Le Lavandou.
But Bardella on Saturday denied any provocation at a press conference before the rally in Cavaillon.
"Reconquest chose to send candidates from Paris where we have long had elected officials who are legitimate representatives of the national camp," he said.
- 'Struggling to make ends meet' -
The far-right has historically done well in Provence-Alpes-Cote-d'Azur, where the National Front, since renamed National Rally, gained control of three towns in a key breakthrough in the 1995 municipal elections.
Many French people forced to flee Algeria, -- the so-called "pieds noirs" -- settled in the region after the former colony gained independence in 1962, and tend to vote for the far-right.
"Many pieds noirs know what happened in Algeria. One voter told me, 'I've already lost one country, I don't want to lose another," Zemmour told AFP, after campaigning at the main market in the resort town of Sainte-Maxime on Friday.
Zemmour is trying to convince voters who think Le Pen -- who has sought to widen her support base by focusing on social and economic issues -- has gone soft on immigration to back his party instead.
Martin says the region is not just "that of the rich and the French Riviera", and that there have been waves of de-industrialisation and unemployment that meant voters switched from the Communist Party to the RN.
The region also has a high immigration rate. In 2017, Provence-Alpes-Cote-d'Azur had the biggest percentage of population who are immigrants (10.8) after the Paris region of Ile-de-France (19.5), according to the interior ministry.
"I'm a working-class retired man, my income regularly decreases, my children and my grandchildren are struggling to make ends meet," lifelong National Rally voter Gerard Marcaggi, 71, said as he sipped a glass of rose in Cavaillon.
"I would have liked her (Le Pen) to insist a bit more on the question of immigration, but we know that she has it up her sleeve and hasn't forgotten it," added Marcaggi.
P.Gonzales--CPN