Le Pen promises no witch hunts in regions her far-right wins

Mr. Trump on Monday evoked comparisons to Ms. Le Pen and her European counterparts with his call to close American borders to all Muslims “until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on”.

Since then, however, the third-placed Socialist Party has pulled out of the race in both those key regions, urging its supporters to back Nicolas Sarkozy’s Republicans in the run-offs on December 13 to keep the Front out of power.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Friday warned that the far-right National Front (FN) possible major gains in regional runoffs would lead to a “civil war”.

It won by a similar margin in the south-east, where her niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen leads the party list.

“They can do nothing against the survival instinct of the people”, Le Pen said, urging supporters to vote massively in Sunday’s decisive second round vote to counter what she called a “state defamation campaign… unworthy of a modern democracy”.

Marine Le Pen, a candidate for president of the northern region, went on the offensive three days before Sunday’s elections, and a day after a poll suggested she may lose.

Le Pen softened her usually trenchant stance in a reach-out to left and right, saying her party represents a new way where “patriots” respect the interests of the regions and clans and “political fraud” have no place. “They key word won’t be ideology but pragmatism”, she said in a clear bid to lure voters fearful of an agenda by a party accused by the mainstream of dividing the French. It is being imported, through mass immigration, and the sudden increase in the Muslim population.

In the southern Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region, Marechal-Le Pen would get 46 percent against 54 percent for Christian Estrosi, the conservative mayor of the Riviera city of Nice. Although the FN enjoyed their highest ever share last week in the first round, a coalition of leftist voters are likely to take the chance to rule away now their own candidates have largely been knocked out or even tactically withdrawn.

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