Marine Le Pen is securing key votes as the French public turn away from scandal hit former Prime Minister Francois Fillon.
And things are only set to get worse as Fillon gets set to meet judges investigating claims he gave thousands of euros of taxpayers’ money to his wife in a fake jobs scandal.
The Republican’s leader became embroiled in yet another scandal yesterday when he was accused of accepting £43,000 in free clothes.
Fillon is losing votes to Marine Len Pen who has once again taken a lead against En Marche! candidate Emmanuel Macron who is tipped by pollsters to win the second vote.
And the 63-year-old appeared to obliterate his own campaign by suggesting he wanted to cut 500,000 French public sector jobs. He also said he wanted to force austerity on a French public already struggling from a wave of strikes, cut backs and terrorism. Also he said he wanted to bring an end to the 35-hour working week and raise the retirement age to 65 from 62.
“I want to make 100 billion euros ($107 billion) of savings over five years and reduce by 500,000 the number of public sector jobs. My programme is based on an ambition to make France a great political and economic power”, Fillon said.
A new opinion poll released this morning showed Fillon crashing out of race in the first round, taking 20 percent of the vote to Macron’s 25 percent and Le Pen’s 27 per cent.