Le Pen Supporters, Detractors Gather in Marseille
Far-Right Presidential Candidate Makes Final Campaign Stop as Sunday Elections Draw Near
By MORT ROSENBLUM
.c The Associated Press
MARSEILLE, France (May 2) - Rain dampened Jean-Marie Le Pen's parade on Thursday, but thousands gathered in this southern city to hear the far-right presidential candidate repeat his promise to liberate France from what he calls a corrupt occupation.
At the same time, thousands more of all political stripes marched toward Marseille's Old Port with their own goal - thwarting Le Pen, a man many term a Nazi sympathizer who is menacing the French Republic.
Le Pen came to this ancient Mediterranean city for a final flourish before elections on Sunday. He upset Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in the first round and faces President Jacques Chirac in the runoff.
The multiracial city of Marseille is no Le Pen fiefdom. However, it is the heartland of Provence, where his National Front is the strongest, supported by many bitter veterans of a lost colonial war against Algeria.
Fearing violence, authorities sent 1,500 heavily armed riot police to Marseille - more than the number who patrolled against British hooligans during the World Cup soccer tournament in 1998.
But few old Marseille hands seemed worried.
''He hasn't got much real support,'' said Pierre Minguella, who for 28 years has served bouillabaisse at the Miramar Restaurant. ''Most people voted for him in the primaries only because they were fed up.''
As in the rest of France, he said, people were shocked that Le Pen had placed second, and now voters from the far left to the conservative right are backing Chirac to stop him.
Roland Sarfati, a retired Jewish businessman of Tunisian origin, said Le Pen had profited from the government's failure to address the problem of rising crime.
''Tensions in Marseille fed the first-round vote,'' he said, predicting that Le Pen would do worse in the second round. ''But that doesn't solve the problem. A government has got to deal realistically with the situation and put criminals in jail.'' Now, he said, ''there is no more state.''
Sarfati said relations between Jews and Muslims in Marseille, normally a place where different groups live in relative harmony, had suffered greatly from the recent Middle East violence.
Le Pen's followers were meeting later Thursday in a covered sports arena near Prado beach, miles from the Old Port where the opposing rally formed.
Police and National Front security guards took positions to avoid clashes. But a daylong steady rain dampened spirits on both sides.
On Wednesday, France's traditional May 1 labor day, 40,000 anti-Le Pen demonstrators turned out to throng Marseille streets - part of a national outpouring of well over a million people voicing their outrage over Le Pen's policies.
Le Pen held his own march of about 10,000 people, paying homage to his party's heroine, Joan of Arc, and calling Chirac corrupt and dishonest. Le Pen presented himself as the candidate to liberate France from corruption.
He said Thursday he didn't consider the demonstrations against him a success - saying that out of a population of 60 million, a million protesters isn't many.
''It leaves me totally indifferent that the left demonstrated in the streets, it's not the first time they've done it,'' Le Pen said.
On Wednesday, the largest anti-Le Pen march was centered around Paris' Place de la Bastille, site of the revolutionary-era prison that is a symbol of French democracy. At least 400,000 people of all ages and classes of society chanted anti-Le Pen slogans, held up banners, played instruments or beat drums to reggae rhythms.
Thousands carried signs calling Le Pen and his National Front party ''Nazis,'' and some showed Le Pen with a narrow mustache drawn in, to resemble Adolf Hitler.
The demonstrations were largely peaceful, although about 12 people were taken into police custody for minor infractions.
AP-NY-05-02-02 1421EDT
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. |
