Top French party officials back candidate

After the general election there is a runoff between the two candidates with the most votes from the general election.

Fillon assailed the conservative allies who have abandoned his campaign, and pledged to create jobs and slash public spending to put France back on its feet.

An emergency meeting of the French conservative party’s leadership unanimously backed Francois Fillon as candidate for the presidential election, a senior party official said on Monday.

That made Fillon the front-runner in polls – until January, when he was accused of arranging taxpayer-funded jobs for his wife and two of his children that they never performed. Fillon’s lawyer, Antonin Levy, told the news outlet the finds did not need to be declared and had been repaid in full since.

Speaking of his own party, Mr Juppe said: “What a waste”. Last week I received many calls asking me to take over.

“He needed someone to do a lot of different tasks, and if it wasn’t for me, he would have paid someone to do it, so we decided it would be me”, Penelope Fillon told the paper.

“For me it is too late but it is not too late for France”, the 71 year-old said.

Yet the curious fact is that, in France as in the United States, these damning circumstances have not echoed almost as loudly as the suspicions weighing on Fillon, the candidate of the Republican right and one of Le Pen’s main opponents-if the damning circumstances are mentioned at all. He insists the jobs were not fake, but Fillon now faces possible charges on March 15.

The statement by Juppe therefore helps consolidate Macron’s position.

French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, an independent who started the “En Marche!”

Fillon had earlier suffered a blistering attack from fellow-conservative Alain Juppe that summed up the concerns of the moderates about his aggressive reaction to the judicial probe.

Fillon’s Republicans party remains dangerously divided over his candidacy, though, and its political committee is holding an urgent meeting Monday.

Mr Sarkozy said the Conservative party’s current divisions are only adding to support for the far-right.

Fillon, a former prime minister, apologized to voters for errors in judgment but insisted he was being unfairly targeted in an election season.

Fillon has denied any wrongdoing with his consultancy work.

“Unlike the others, I will not abandon him”, Penelope Fillon was quoted as saying in the Journal du dimanche newspaper. “The instigation of judicial investigations against him and his defence based on a supposed plot and political assassination have brought him to a dead end”.