The campaign of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron said late Friday that it has been subjected to a “massive and coordinated piracy action” of emails and other internal communications.
The announcement emerged as the last official day of campaigning in France’s most contentious presidential election in decades drew to a close. Macron, an independent centrist, is facing off against the far-right populist Marine Le Pen. Voters are set to decide Sunday which candidate becomes France’s next president.
At the end of a high-stakes race, the news immediately stoked fears of a targeted operation intended to destabilize the electoral process, especially after reports of alleged Russian hacking in the U.S. presidential election in November.
.. The Kremlin has clear links to the Le Pen campaign. For years, a complex web of financial ties has linked Le Pen to Russian lending sources, and for months she has received exceedingly positive coverage in Russian state media.
.. In late March, Le Pen met in person with Russian President Vladimir Putin on a visit to Moscow.
.. the campaign’s statement said that real documents — such as emails from personal and professional accounts, contracts and accounting statements — were mixed in with false ones.
.. Unlike in the United States, campaigning in France comes to a hard stop a day before voters go to the polls. Candidates may not actively campaign in any way after the close of the campaign.
The disclosure of the documents just before the end of Friday means the Macron campaign will not be able to address the matter extensively Saturday.
Emmanuel Macron is 39 and his wife is 64. French women say it’s about time.
Emmanuel Macron, the front-runner in Sunday’s French presidential election, shares something with President Trump: a 24-year age gap with his wife. The difference is that Macron’s wife is the older one.
.. nearly all women interviewed did say they were more interested in Macron, who was a virtual unknown until recently, because his marriage breaks the mold.
.. French politics has long been dominated by men with younger lovers.
François Hollande, the current president, separated from his partner, Valerie Trierweiler, after a very public affair with an actress 18 years his junior. Former president François Mitterrand took a mistress half his age when he was in his 40s, a younger woman who famously stood near his wife at his funeral in 1996.
.. Lilach Eliyahu, a fashion designer, said the fact that Macron has a wife who “has wrinkles and cellulite makes me think of him as a feminist. He is the opposite of Donald Trump.”
.. Many women find it interesting that Macron is putting his wife in the spotlight, posing for photos with her, even appearing on the cover of a magazine with her in a bathing suit at the beach.
.. this election is her husband’s only shot at the presidency, even though he is only 39 — because she will soon look too old.
Constructing the Modern Prince
Conversely, a few months ago Macron’s qualification [for the second round] would have been hard to predict. A series of “accidents” explain how it happened: the fact that François Hollande did not stand for a second term, the scandals that hit François Fillon, Benoît Hamon’s victory over Manuel Valls in the Socialist primary, and the elimination of Alain Juppé in the primaries for the Right. All these events opened up a political space in the centre. So without these “accidents,” Macron would very probably not have reached the second round.
.. So we have to resist the temptation to think that in the first round a “revolution” took place in French politics. For over a decade the French political field has been developing toward a gradual tripartite division: a left-wing pole, a right-wing pole — each with its own internal contradictions and undercurrents — and a third pole constituted by the Front National.
.. In the Fifth Republic, reaching the presidency is of decisive importance. But without a majority in the National Assembly, it is impossible to govern. Macron only collected the support of 18% of registered voters (24% of those who voted), which is not a lot. So it is far from obvious that even if he does win the second round, he will be able to transform his victory into a parliamentary majority.
.. only able to govern by relying on MPs from the Socialist Party, the centre, and even certain sections of the Right that agree to collaborate with him.
.. I think it improbable that En Marche! will transform into a party that restructures the French political terrain. The distinction between Left and Right has deep roots in modern capitalist societies. The social roots of this distinction are connected to class conflicts over the distribution of material resources, and not simply questions of “discourse” or “values” that can become outdated.
.. The opposition between “nationals” and “neoliberals” exists within each camp. It does not replace the opposition between Left and Right, but complicates it.
The Calculated Rise of France’s Emmanuel Macron
French presidential candidate skipped electoral politics, instead connecting with the elite and acquiring market experience; at stake, the future of Europe
Mr. Macron made friends in high places who propelled him to ever-higher echelons of French society. Along the way he acquired a repertoire of skills, from piano and philosophy to acting and finance, that helped impress future mentors.
.. Rather than run for office in his hometown, gradually building a constituency, he proceeded straight to Paris, where he became an expert on banking and European technocracy. He acquired a mastery of arcane regulations, from the 3,334-page French national labor code to the plumbing of the European Union’s single market.. A Macron win would put Europe’s second-largest economy under an outspoken EU supporter who wants to establish a command center for the Continent’s defense, create a border police force, loosen France’s rigid labor rules, cut payroll taxes and reduce French public-sector employment by 120,000... Mr. Macron met his future wife, Brigitte Trogneux, while he was in high school and she was his drama coach. She was more than 20 years his senior, a member of a prominent business family of chocolatiers, and married... Mr. Hollande hired Mr. Macron as an aide, dispatching him to reassure investors and business leaders nervous about the candidate’s plan for a 75% tax on incomes above €1 million.After winning the presidency in 2012, Mr. Hollande brought Mr. Macron to the Élysée Palace as deputy chief of staff. As business leaders threatened to leave France, citing the tax policy, Mr. Macron warned his boss in an email that he risked turning France into “Cuba without the sun.”.. Mr. Macron invited Sigmar Gabriel, then Germany’s economy minister and vice chancellor, to a private dinner in Paris. They agreed to commission a report from economists that could serve as a blueprint for a grand bargain Mr. Macron envisioned to revive the EU’s fortunes: Germany would provide stimulus by spending more, and France would become a European model of economic rectitude by paring back its generous labor protections.
.. In his view, France’s job market was hemmed in by a rigid educational system that set young people on a narrow career trajectory and by labor rules that discouraged companies from hiring them.
.. “When a president names someone minister,” he said, it’s “not to make him a servant.”