French centrist presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron is promising an ethics bill that will block office-holders from conflicts of interest, nepotism and other ethical issues that have infuriated voters.
Macron, who started his own political movement just a year ago, also promised he could get a legislative majority to pass the measure and others he says France needs to pull itself from the economic doldrums.
Legislative elections are in June, and whoever is president will depend on lawmakers to implement an agenda.
Candidates of the two main parties, the Socialists and the Republicans, failed to make it to the presidential runoff for the first time in modern French history. Macron, who has pulled support from both wings, said Tuesday candidates will have to quit their parties to run in his movement.
Le Pen: Not plagiarism, humor
Marine Le Pen’s spokesmen have acknowledged that the French far-right candidate offered up a speech that, in many parts, copied around 90 seconds of one by a former presidential candidate, and called it a “wink” toward him and his supporters.
Francois Fillon, the former Republicans candidate, first delivered the speech extolling France and its virtues on April 15, just two weeks before Le Pen’s discourse on Monday.
Three separate spokesmen for Le Pen used the word “wink” to describe the extracts copied word for word from Fillon. “I think with part of the right, we have exactly the same vision on the national identity and independence,” Louis Aliot, Front National vice president, told LCI television Tuesday.
Fillon has called for his supporters to back her centrist rival, Emmanuel Macron.
Poland offended by Le Pen link
Poland’s Foreign Ministry is denouncing French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s comparison of Poland’s government to the “regimes” of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban.
Macron made his remarks at a Paris rally on Monday ahead of the Sunday runoff between himself and populist Marine Le Pen.
At a Paris rally, he said: “You know the friends and allies of Mrs. Le Pen. These are the regimes of Orban, Kaczynski and Putin. They are not open and free democracies.”
Jaroslaw Kaczynski is the chairman of Poland’s ruling conservative Law and Justice party and the country’s most powerful politician.
The ministry said Macron used “unacceptable comparisons and mental shortcuts that lead to errors in public opinion” and denied that Poland is an ally of Le Pen.
