The French 2022 presidential election campaign has officially started, with new rules intended to give all 12 candidates a fair chance to be heard by voters, reports The Guardian.
The launch came as a row broke out over extreme rightwing supporters of Éric Zemmour shouting “Macron assassin” at a rally he claimed was attended by 100,000 people in Paris on Sunday.
Valérie Pécresse, the candidate for the centre-right Les Républicains, was among those to criticise Zemmour for letting the crowd continue chanting.
“I will fight the outgoing president with all my strength but to let an opponent be called a murderer is dangerous for the republic. This is certainly not the right! This is not my France,” Pécresse tweeted.
Christophe Castaner, the president of the governing LREM group in the Assemblée nationale, said Zemmour was “irresponsible” for letting the chanting continue. Zemmour’s team said their candidate had not heard the crowd.
As the official campaign opened, the latest poll by OpinionWay for the French financial newspaper Les Echos showed Emmanuel Macron on 28% of the first-round vote, followed by the far-right Marine Le Pen on 21%. Behind them Jean-Luc Mélenchon has risen to 14%, with Pécresse on 11% and Zemmour on 10%.