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Support for Le Pen surges

Jason Burke

— PHOTO: AFP

France's far-right party Front National (FN) president Jean-Marie Le Pen meets voters in Paris on Saturday.

Paris: French rapper Xiao-Venom Blackara, better known as XV, is a busy man this weekend.

He has two pressing tasks: organising his first major concert and mobilising his neighbours and friends for the presidential elections in two weeks. That the two events will take place within a few days of each other is no coincidence.

With the hardline right-wing former Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy still leading the polls and, according to surveys published on Saturday, strong and growing support for extreme right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, French rappers are taking centre stage in the increasingly bitter battle for the votes of the nation's wavering and uncertain electorate.

Threat of repeat

Many of the rappers are motivated by the threat of a repeat of the elections of 2002 when a lacklustre left-wing campaign and a widespread sense of insecurity carried Mr. Le Pen through to the second run-off vote.

This weekend Mr. Le Pen's score in the polls is higher than at a similar time five years ago — boosted by a campaign, orchestrated by his daughter, which has sought to "de-demonise" the hard-right leader.

"We are tracking Le Pen carefully and his vote is rising in a way that is not dissimilar to 2002," said one pollster on Saturday. Today's polls reveal that Mr. Le Pen, who has been repeatedly accused of incitement to racial hatred and Holocaust denial, and the centre-right contender, Francis Bayrou, have further closed the gap on Mr. Sarkozy and Segolene Royal, Socialist candidate.

Mr. Le Pen is already confident enough to be preparing his strategy for a second round run-off.

However the rappers' efforts to get young people in France's deprived colonies to register to vote have paid off.

Job opportunities

In Seine-Saint-Denis, which suffered most in the riots of 18 months ago, a rise of 9 per cent, double the national average, has been logged with far higher levels in specific communities such as Aulnay-sous-Bois where the riots started.

Yet, though some rappers such as the best-selling Akhenaton have backed Ms. Royal, the new votes will not automatically go to the left. Another well-known musician, Doc Gyneco, has backed Mr. Sarkozy, whose liberal economic programme sometimes appeals in deprived areas that hope for more job opportunities for those without "the right diplomas, contacts or colour of skin".

"Though his vision of France is worrying, economically there are some things in the programme of Sarkozy that look logical to us," Feniski of Saipan Supa Crew said.

For XV, the critical element is "to listen to all the arguments to force the candidates to make the effort to persuade us. We've even got to listen to Le Pen," he told this reporter.—

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

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