French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is too extreme, but centrist Emmanuel Macron is too young. Conservative Francois Fillon cannot be trusted, Socialist Benoit Hamon is the establishment, and Communist-backed radical Jean-Luc Melenchon, too risky.
Just a week before the French cast their first votes for the next president, this is how the many undecided voters view this year’s cast of candidates: With abject disappointment.
Marc Jaurena lives in the northeastern city of Metz but drives nearly an hour to work in Luxembourg, 63 kilometers (40 miles) away.
“For me, working in Luxembourg, my job will be directly impacted by a Marine Le Pen election,” Jaurena said, as the far-right leader has pledged that, if elected, she will pull France out of the euro currency and hold a referendum on whether the country should leave the EU.
The 34-year-old Jaurena said he has also been scandalized by the fake jobs scandals that have embroiled not only Le Pen, but also Fillon.
Fillon’s campaign has been rocked by multiple scandals over expenses and conflicts of interest, including allegations that he gave his wife a fake job as a parliamentary assistant, for which she was paid a total of €680,000 ($725,000).
As for Le Pen, the European Parliament has accused her far-right National Front (FN) of using funds allotted for parliamentary assistants to pay staff for party work in France.
She has dismissed the investigation into FN’s expenses, saying it is a plot to derail her campaign bid.
Jaurena is also unmoved by the ethos of the Communist-backed euroskeptic Melenchon, and by what he called Macron’s “brainwashing.”
“I know who I won’t vote for, but I don’t know who I’ll vote for,” he said.
He is among the nearly 40 percent of voters who have yet to decide which way they will vote — or even if they will show up at on election day next Sunday.
“This election is unusual. The campaign is rocked by scandals,” political scientist Richard Kleinschmager told AFP.
“The situation has become too complex to get people engaged.”
Voters’ indecision has reinforced the uncertainty of this year’s two-round presidential election, in which four candidates — Le Pen, Macron, Melenchon and Fillon — are neck-and-neck for the first round of voting on April 23. Polls give each between 19 and 23 percent of votes.
The top two candidates from that vote will go forward to the second-round run-off on May 7.
“For me, it’s unclear,” said 41-year-old Fabrice Blanchard, a commercial agent in Lorraine. “Macron, we don’t know if he is of the right or the left.” As for Hamon, “he is from the outgoing government,” which has been marked by high unemployment and low growth.
Only 17 percent of voters questioned in an Ipsos poll in February gave high marks to France’s democratic system.
In the western city of Rennes, Pierre, 28, voted for the then president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012, but he is leaning toward Macron this time around, “because he’s young.”
But for retired teacher Jeannette, 77, who is among the undecided voters, said Macron is “too young.”
“Undecided voters are a feature of this election,” Kleinschmager said. “Voters from the two major parties have been thoroughly weakened.
Francoise, the daughter of a former mayor in the eastern province of Franche-Comte, said she would have voted for Fillon “if there hadn’t been the scandals.”
“Honesty in life and in politics, it’s essential,” the 54-year-old pharmaceutical worker said.
“My father was mayor of a town, and when I made copies at city hall, he took out money to pay for them.
“So then when we see the Fillon family... I am outraged by the scandals.”
There is a danger in having so many undecided voters at this late stage, said Kleinschmager.

Source: Arab News