Maverick centrist Emmanuel Macron has come first and far-right leader Marine Le Pen second in Sunday’s first-round voting in France’s presidential elections, setting up a knockout second-round contest between the two on May 7th. While the final results are yet to arrive, conservative candidate François Fillon and radical-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon were neck-and-neck in third and fourth place respectively. Socialist Party candidate Benoît Hamon came fifth with about 6% of the vote, a historically low figure for his party. Follow the results, reactions and analyses as they happened throughout the evening. Reporting by Graham Tearse and Michael Streeter.
Amid increased security France’s 47 million registered voters, of whom opinion polls estimate nearly a quarter are still undecided, began voting Sunday in the first round of a presidential election thriller, with the top four candidates neck and neck and when only the top-scoring two will proceed to the knockout round in two weeks time.
Several questions remain unexplained surrounding the attack that left a police officer dead and two others wounded on the Champs-Elysées on Thursday evening, notably whether the assailant who was shot dead, 39-year-old French national Karim Cheurfi, was in relation with Islamic State group, as it has claimed.
The tight presidential contest, in which four out of 11 candidates are leading opinion polls neck-and-neck, kicked off Saturday in France's overseas territories and départements, including Guiana, in South America, where a last-minute agreement to end a crippling social movement was reached between protestors and Paris.
French conservative presidential election candidate François Fillon, whose campaign has been plagued by a fake jobs scandal and his related placement under investigation for suspected fraud and misuse of company assets, has caused a storm of protest after he suggested, during a TV interview on Thursday, that a journalist questioning him was unaware of his manifesto because she was pregnant.
As voting in the first of a two-round presidential election begins in France on Sunday, the shootings in central Paris on Thursday which left one police officer dead and two others wounded, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group, terrorism has led the agenda of the closing campaigns, notably among rightwing candidates.
French national Karim Cheurfi, 39, who was killed after he murdered one police officer and wounded two others on the Champs-Elysées avenue in central Paris on Thursday evening, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group, was known to French security services and was released from prison on parole in 2015 after serving 14 years in prison for shooting two policemen and a third man in 2001.
At least one police officer was killed and two others wounded when a gunman, who was subsequently shot dead in return fire, attacked a police vehicle on the popular Champs-Elysées avenue in central Paris using what the interior ministry described as an 'automatic weapon'.
The centrist French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, leading polls before first-round voting on Sunday, held a phone conversation with former US president Barack Obama on Thursday, giving the former economy minister a clear boost just as his rivals are narrowing the gap between frontrunners.
Pregnant women treated with valproate, prescribed worldwide for epilepsy and bi-polar disorders and introduced in France in 1967, is believed to have caused malformations, and notably spina bifida, in up to 4,100 children in France, according to a study by the French National Agency for the Safety of Medicines.
All his blog posts
The Mediapart Club
Join the discussion
Mediapart’s journalists also use their blogs, and participate in their own name to this space of debates, by confiding behind the scenes of investigations or reports, doubts or personal reactions to the news.
Le tribunal de Paris a relaxé Mediapart du procès en diffamation que lui avait intenté l’ancien élu Renaissance Emmanuel Pellerin. Il a même condamné l’ex-député, avocat de profession, au paiement de dommages et intérêts.
« Une heure à tuer », le spectacle de Waly Dia, est désormais accessible en VOD sur Mediapart. Ce contenu d’humour politique est complémentaire des informations que vous trouvez dans le journal.
Mediapart a désormais sa chaîne sur WhatsApp. Nous y publions quotidiennement une sélection d’articles et billets à ne pas manquer. Explications et invitation à nous y rejoindre, si vous êtes adepte de la messagerie.
Le journaliste français est mort vendredi 3 octobre en Ukraine, victime d’un tir de drone. Il couvrait cette guerre depuis le début de l’invasion russe et avait collaboré avec Mediapart à de nombreuses reprises.
Depuis l’annonce de la condamnation à cinq ans de prison ferme avec mandat de dépôt différé de Nicolas Sarkozy, l’ancien président de la République et ce qu’il lui reste de proches multiplient les attaques contre notre journal, à l’origine des premières révélations dans cette affaire. Mise au point de la direction éditoriale.
