Gloves off in French election as Le Pen aide slams Macron

FAR-RIGHT leader Marine Le Pen’s top aide sharply attacked her centrist opponent Emmanuel Macron, who is favorite to beat her for the French presidency, as campaigning for the final round on May 7 got under way within hours of first round results.

Global markets reacted with relief to Sunday’s outcome which broke a pattern of anti-establishment election shocks in which Britons voted to quit the European Union and Donald Trump was elected US president.

The euro briefly reached five-month peaks while European shares rose sharply on the likelihood that the 39-year-old Macron will win the presidency in the runoff against Le Pen. Her pledge to ditch the euro currency and possibly quit the European Union has unnerved markets.

Reuters reports that  as both sides looked to court support now from their defeated rivals for the crucial May vote, Le Pen’s camp took aim at what they see as Macron’s weak spots – his privileged banker background and his role as economy minister in a discredited Socialist government of outgoing President Francois Hollande.

“Emmanuel is not a patriot. He sold off national companies. He criticized French culture,” Florian Philippot, deputy leader of Le Pen’s National Front told BFM TV, saying she and Macron held completely different visions of France.

Philippot called the independent centrist and former investment banker “arrogant” and said that in Sunday night’s speech acclaiming his move into the second round “he was speaking as if he had won already”.

“That was disdainful towards the French people,” Phillipot said. Macron’s victory dinner celebrations at Paris’s upscale Rotonde restaurant amounted to “bling-bling biz,” he said.

Though Macron, 39, is a comparative political novice who has never held elected office, new opinion polls on Sunday saw him easily winning the final clash against the 48-year-old Le Pen.

Interior ministry final figures in the highly-contested first round gave Macron 23.74 percent of the votes against Le Pen’s 21.53.

A Harris survey saw Macron going on to win the runoff against her by 64 percent to 36. An Ipsos/Sopra Steria poll gave a similar result.