French press review 27 January 2017

If we set aside the Toulouse daily La Depeche - whose top headline screams "Handball : Our Experts in the Final” - For those who missed it the World Handball Championship is underway here in France - most of this morning's French papers interest themselves in two stories.

There's the second round of voting on Sunday to choose a Socialist party candidate to contest the Presidential election in the spring.

And, the fuss over the centre right Republican party's pick former Prime Minister François Fillon who's been accused of making generous and allegedly unwarranted payments to his wife Penelope supposedly for work as his Parliamentary assistant.

Le Monde's top front page headline declares that "The Fillon affairs upsets his campaign and increases the discomfort of the Right."

The paper's editorial is headlined "The poison of suspicion."

The paper reminds us that damaging revelations have often been made in attempts to derail campaigns for the French Presidency.

In November 1965, three weeks before the first presidential election by universal suffrage, the Minister of the Interior, advised General Charles de Gaulle to attack his main opponent Francois Mitterrand.

The Minister showed him a photograph of Mitterrand shaking the hand of Marshal Petain, the wartime French leader who collaborated with the Nazis.

"Why not let some hidden truths come out?" asked the minister. "No" said de Gaulle. "I will not do the politics of mudslinging."

He was the only one le Monde explains, citing dirty tricks and damaging revelations in every election that followed.

Among them efforts to embarrass Georges Pompidou before the 1969 election - by linking him to the unsolved murder of movie star Alain Delon's bodyguard and with pictures - possibly faked - and Mme. Pompidou in a sex orgy.

1.Bokassa diamonds against Valerie Giscard d'Estaing in the run-up to 1981.

2.The Trotskyite past of Lionel Jospin before 2002.

3. The Clearstream case against Nicolas Sarkozy before 2007.

For two days François Fillon has been the target, the paper says.

The only way to avoid suspicion is to be "irreproachable", to quote François Fillon himself.

It is up to him to demonstrate that he has been, says le Monde.

*******

As for the Socialist Presidential wannabes, the popular daily Le Parisien reminds us that the two surviving candidates, former Prime Minister Manuel Valls and former Education and Economy Minister Benoît Hamon, went head to head in their final TV debate on Wednesday and are now rallying their supporters for Sunday's decisive vote.

The paper asks its readers "According to you, who will win the second round of the primary?"

Which looks like a fairly meaningless exercise.

So,I suspect le Parisien is having a laugh.

Only 9 readers have responded so far, but their comments give some clue as to the way the wind is blowing.

Some of the responses.

"Hamon to eliminate Valls, but he himself will be eliminated in the first presidential round.”

«Logically Hamon,but since the French are hypocrites anything is possible."

"Jacques Chirac.

»It does not matter. What is the French left?"

«Anyone except Valls!!! How can one still believe the bullshit (excuse my French) of this opportunist amateur with an exaggerated ego and vote for him?

"It has absolutely no importance and will have no impact on the Presidential election."

That,in fact, is the conventional wisdom.

The Socialist candidate has about as much chance of winning the Presidency as I do. That's to say none at all.