PARIS: Francois Fillon was fighting to keep his embattled French presidential bid alive on Monday as former president Nicolas Sarkozy piled pressure on him ahead of a crisis meeting of their rightwing Republicans party.
The conservative Fillon, 63, was once a clear favourite to win France’s election but his campaign is mired in accusations he used public funds to pay his wife for a fake parliamentary job.
Waiting in the wings is another former prime minister, Alain Juppe, whom Fillon beat in a primary vote to be chosen as the candidate for the conservative Les Republicans party.
Sarkozy, who picked Fillon as his prime minister from 2007-2012, called on him and Juppe to meet “to find a dignified and credible way out of this situation which cannot continue and which is creating serious problems for the French people.”
Juppe, 71, is seen as the most obvious replacement for Fillon but he has consistently ruled himself out of contention.
Fillon came out fighting again during a prime-time TV interview on Sunday, seemingly buoyed by a rally by his supporters in Paris on Sunday.
“No one today can prevent me being a candidate,” he told a local news channel, adding that the accusations against him were “aimed at stopping me being a candidate.”
Surveys suggest that if the election were held today, centrist pro-business candidate Emmanuel Macron and the far-right leader Marine Le Pen would be the top two candidates in the first round on April 23 and that Fillon would be eliminated.
Polls suggest that Macron would beat Le Pen in the decisive second round.
Fillon, while speaking at the rally hit back at suggestions Juppe could replace him on Sunday.
“If the voters of the right and the centre wanted Alain Juppe, they would have voted for Alain Juppe,” he said.
The current French leader, Francois Hollande, warned in an interview with six European papers published on Monday that the threat of a Le Pen presidency was real but that he would fight to prevent it happening.
“The far-right has not been so high [in the polls] for more than 30 years but France will not give in,” the president said.
France “is aware that the vote on April 23 and May 7 will determine not only the fate of our country but also the future of the European project itself,” he added.
Le Pen, 48, has vowed to ditch the euro as France’s currency if elected and hold a referendum on the country’s membership of the European Union.
Hollande, who has battled stubbornly high unemployment throughout his five-year term and has suffered low poll ratings, decided last year not to run for a second term.
