François Fillon, the conservative presidential candidate who is under investigation in an alleged embezzlement of public funds, lost a confidence vote on Friday in parliament and was ruled ineligible to stand. With no other Republican candidate in sight, a party convention is scheduled for Saturday afternoon to choose his successor.
From Reuters:
French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Fillon was unable to continue as presidential candidate because the parliamentary investigation has put him under investigation and is likely to continue.
“From a standpoint of honor, from a standpoint of responsibility, Mr. Fillon is not able to continue. At the same time, we’re ready to help the Republican movement find a new candidate,” Cazeneuve said, adding that the National Assembly president, Paul Gros-Bennet, would chair Saturday’s party convention and have the right to give a ruling as soon as possible.
Fillon has said he will appeal the decision.
As an already wobbly François Fillon looks increasingly gaunt and shaken, some French media have floated his more extreme opponents as a possible alternative. But a strategy such as that would likely appeal only to the fringes of the Right: the virulent far-right National Front (FN) would shun it, and their apparent leader, Marine Le Pen, told them to stay away. (The FN would also have an immediate candidate in the presidential race to face Le Pen).
The current favorite to replace Fillon, who won 18 percent of the first-round vote in the April election, has now been disqualified, as France remained stuck in political paralysis less than two months before the scheduled election. Fillon, the country’s most popular presidential candidate, had been expected to win Sunday’s runoff, but instead threw up the media storm and lost, reducing his political future to another election, which he would almost certainly lose, due to his legal troubles.
The current Socialist Party presidential candidate, Benoît Hamon, said Fillon must be punished — unless he wants to go down in history as the man who brought down his own party.
“He cannot shoulder the mantle of the Republican movement.”
Fillon also attacked his political rivals, the National Front and Socialist Party, accusing them of supporting an election date set for April, on the eve of Easter. “Three weeks after the liberation of Goa and in the wake of horror, the republic must organize elections on the most sacred day of the Christian calendar,” he said.
Fillon, was found liable for falsely claiming to have given his wife a 450,000 euro annual salary and is being investigated over allegations he paid a parliamentary assistant 14,000 euros for no work.