France’s Hollande nods to right on immigration, veils

PARIS: Presidential frontrunner Francois Hollande gave nods to far-right voters who could decide the outcome of the election, saying on Friday he would limit immigration during an economic crisis and uphold a ban on women wearing veils in public.
Hollande, a Socialist, is on course to win a May 6 runoff against center-right President Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy’s only hope for victory is to win over the record number of voters who picked the far-right National Front in the first round on Sunday.
The president has swung hard to the right on immigration and Islam in the week since National Front leader Marine Le Pen won 17.9 percent of the first round vote. Hollande has said National Front voters should be listened to, but has been reluctant to court them openly.
“In a period of crisis, which we are experiencing, limiting economic immigration is necessary and essential,” he said.
Hollande answered evasively when asked repeatedly on prime-time television on Thursday whether he thought there were too many foreigners in France, as Sarkozy and Le Pen have both proclaimed in campaign speeches.
Clarifying his position after his evasions drew criticism, he told RTL radio on Friday that if elected, he would have parliament fix an annual quota for non-European Union foreigners coming to France to take up jobs.
“There will always be legal immigration. Can the number be reduced? That’s the debate,” Hollande said, noting Sarkozy had already reduced the government’s annual target for economic migrants to 20,000 from 30,000.
“In my view, that’s the kind of level that would apply in times of crisis. In any case, the numbers will be managed.”
Hollande also said he would uphold and enforce a ban on all-enveloping Muslim veils, known as the niqab or burqa, even though he abstained in a 2010 parliamentary vote when Sarkozy proposed the law.
His comment seemed designed to counter attempts by Sarkozy to paint him as soft on radical Islam, notably by alleging that a Swiss Muslim scholar had endorsed Hollande for president. The scholar, Tariq Ramadan, has denied backing a candidate.
The huge vote for Le Pen revealed frustration among voters over a relentless rise in unemployment. She proposes giving preference to French nationals for job openings, welfare benefits and public housing, and penalising firms employing illegal immigrants.
Sarkozy successfully appealed to far-right voters in the second round to secure his election to his first presidential term in 2007, but faces a more difficult task this time around because of economic hardship.
An election race dominated from the start by the economy has now boiled down to whether Sarkozy can lure enough of Le Pen’s supporters to his side in the runoff to eat into Hollande’s lead of between 6 and 10 percentage points in polls taken this week.
Both candidates hold political rallies at the weekend and will come face to face in their sole televised debate on May 2.
A Harris Interactive survey published on Friday found that 31 percent of Le Pen voters plan to abstain on May 6, while 48 percent would vote Sarkozy and 21 percent would back Hollande. Most tallies suggest Sarkozy would need as much as 80 percent of Le Pen’s vote to win the run-off.