Sarkozy Offers Fillon, Juppe to Discuss Ways Out of Campaign Crisis

Members of Juppe’s Republicans party had been calling for him to throw his hat into the ring after a financial scandal engulfed Fillon’s campaign and led to a significant drop in his poll ratings.

Speeches at the anti-corruption demonstration were routinely interrupted by protesters banging metal spoons on cooking pots, a reference to a French expression equating pots to embarrassing scandals. “It’s always been clear that the odds of Le Pen becoming the next president were quite low and now we see confirmation of that in the polls”.

At a mass rally in Paris on Sunday, a defiant Mr Fillon told thousands of supporters that “no one can stop” his bid for the presidency.

“What a waste!”, Juppe said of the Fillon campaign, hit by allegations that Fillon misued public funds. But for Le Pen, Fillon’s woes had likely made the allegations against her seem less extraordinary and disqualifying to undecided voters, while helping to mobilize her traditional base by fueling their “rage and frustration”.

Le Pen is getting more and more support but it is not secured that she would win the support of half of the population in the upcoming presidential election, he added.

She added: “I went to Seine-et-Marne to meet the mayor of Vaudoué, a village of eight hundred inhabitants”.

He was propelled to the front of the race in part by the scandal engulfing Mr Fillon and on Thursday unveiled a detailed manifesto that included plans to revamp the pension system.

In an interview with France 2 after the rally, Fillon dismissed the suggestion out of hand. Dozens of buses brought supporters from around France, while riot police stood guard around the Place de Trocadero.

The danger for the right is that he could be eliminated in the first round of the two-stage contest on April 23.

Counter-demonstrations also being held.

A flash opinion poll by Harris Interactive showed that only 25% of people now want him to continue as a candidate, down from 35% a month ago, while within his party The Republicans there were more resignations from the campaign after his decision on Wednesday to stay in the race.

After a string of resignations among advisers and backers, the 63-year-old Fillon had been banking on a big turnout at the rally, on a square looking across the river Seine to the Eiffel Tower, to show his detractors that he remains their best hope to win the presidency.

“Never under the fifth republic have we had an election in such confused conditions”, he said, stressing the dangers of Le Pen’s “anti-European fanaticism” and Macron’s “political immaturity”.

“The thing about the judicial affairs for Marine Le Pen and the National Front is that they are not about personal enrichment, while Francois Fillon’s family is directly implicated”, far-right expert Cecile Alduy from Stanford University told a conference this week.

With pressure building on Fillon, Penelope said she had urged her husband to keep going.