Marine Le Pen, the presidential candidate in France for the far-right National Rally party, has suspended her campaign “until the necessary sponsorships have been obtained”, her entourage announced on Tuesday. Marine Le Pen, who had been a finalist in the 2017 presidential election once morest Emmanuel Macron, is worried regarding not gathering the 500 signatures of elected officials necessary to validate her candidacy in the French system.
Given in second position in the polls for the first round of the April election, behind outgoing President Emmanuel Macron – who has not at this stage announced his candidacy -, Ms Le Pen has so far only obtained 366 sponsorships, ten days before the deadline for submitting signatures.
On Sunday, the other far-right candidate, Éric Zemmour, who is hot on the heels of Marine Le Pen in the voting intentions according to the pollsters, assured that it was “very possible” that he would not obtain the 500 sponsorships.
Other candidates are mobilized to try to collect their number of elected signatures, such as the candidate of the radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the only candidate of a divided and weakened left to pass the bar of 10% of voting intentions .
The Constitutional Council has set Friday March 4, 6:00 p.m. as the deadline for presenting its 500 signatures and formally declaring itself a candidate.
