Below, in the video Melenchon uses a hologram to pitch his campaign. The second video is about the French election.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0t0kFMBb24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_1qxt6aqrA
French right leader Marine Le Pen kicked off her
presidential campaign on Saturday with a promise to shield voters from
globalization and make their country "free", hoping to profit from
political turmoil to score a Donald Trump-style upset.
In the most unpredictable election race France has known in
decades, the FN hopes the scandal hitting conservative candidate Francois
Fillon and the rise of populism across the West will help convince voters to
back Le Pen.
"We were told Donald Trump would never win in the United
States against the media, against the establishment, but he won... We were told
Marine Le Pen would not win the presidential election, but on May 7 she will
win!" Jean-Lin Lacapelle, a top FN official, told several hundred party
officials and members.
In 144 "commitments" published at the start of a
two-day rally in Lyon, Le Pen proposes leaving the euro zone, holding a
referendum on EU membership, slapping taxes on imports and on the job contracts
of foreigners, lowering the retirement age and increasing several welfare
benefits while lowering income tax.
The manifesto also foresees reserving certain rights now
available to all residents, including free education, to French citizens only,
hiring 15,000 police, curbing migration and leaving NATO's integrated command.
"The aim of this program is first of all to give France its
freedom back and give the people a voice," Le Pen said in the introduction
to the manifesto.
Emmanuel Macron, a pro-European centrist candidate who polls say
is likely to face Le Pen in the presidential election run-off, also held a
rally in Lyon on Saturday to propose a radically different platform.
Faith in pollsters has been shaken after they failed to
predict Trump's election win or Britain's vote last June to leave the European
Union.
Former front runner Fillon has been damaged by allegations, which
he denies, that he paid his wife and children hundreds of thousands of euros of public money
for work she may not actually have done.
The FN officials taking to the stage targeted Macron more than
any other of Le Pen's opponents, presenting the former investment banker as the
candidate of "international capitalism." The crowd booed his name
every time.
"This presidential election puts two opposite
proposals," Le Pen said in her manifesto. "The 'globalist' choice
backed by all my opponents ... and the 'patriotic' choice which I
personify."
If elected, Le Pen says she would immediately seek an overhaul
of the European Union that would reduce it to a very loose cooperative of
nations with no single currency and no border-free area. If, as is likely,
France's EU partners refuse to agree to this, she would call a referendum to
leave the bloc.
The electoral manifesto is short on macro-economic details but
the FN published its growth and public finances targets on Saturday.
It says a generous policy of tax cuts and welfare increases
would be made possible by fighting social security fraud, tax evasion and
changing tack on the EU and migration, but without explaining how that would be
done.
The program is far less detailed than her 2012 platform and has
softened the presentation of a number of controversial issues, with the FN
trying to find the right balance between reassuring voters and keeping its
anti-establishment image.
For instance, instead of devoting a whole chapter to "the
orderly demolition of the euro" as the 2012 manifesto did, the 2017 one
only briefly mentions regaining France's "monetary sovereignty."
Immigration remains the party's signature theme. When Franck de
Lapersonne, an actor and FN supporter, told the rally that 19th century writer
Victor Hugo "did not learn Arabic at school and that makes me happy,"
he received the loudest ovation of the day, with the crowd chanting the party's
trademark slogan "On est chez nous" ("This is our country!")
Le Pen and her party are facing their own scandals, including
one over assistants in the European Parliament and investigations over her 2012
campaign financing.
But that leaves grass-roots supporters undeterred. "We're
fighting to win the 2017 election," said Victor Birra, the regional head
of the FN youth association.
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