Category Archives: France

France Once Again in the Grip of Islamic Terror

Last Friday (3 February), another attempted terrorist attack took place in Paris, when French soldiers shot and critically wounded a man who attacked them with a machete at the Louvre while shouting “Allah Akbar”. Reportedly, a group of four soldiers guarding the entrance of the Louvre shopping centre had refused him to entry with two backpacks. When the troops stopped him, he launched the attack, wounding one of the soldiers. Hundreds of visitors were inside the museum after the incident and were evacuated. According to the police, the man has been identified as Abdullah Reda Refaei al-Hamamy, a 29-year-old with Egyptian identity paper who arrived in France last month.

After initially refusing to talk, the man, who remains under arrest in hospital, has confirmed his identity. Agence France-Presse has reported that Hamamay had visited Turkey in 2015 and 2016. Afterwards, he entered in France on 26 January on a flight from Dubai and stayed at an apartment costing € 1,700 (£ 1,470) a week near the Champs Elysees that had been reserved last June, months before he applied for a tourist visa in October.
The man’s father, a retired Egyptian police general, said his son had never shown any signals of radicalisation. He said his son is a sale manager and also justified his stay in Paris as a business trip. According to his family, Hamamy was expected to go back to the Emirates soon, as he has a wife and a seven-months old son and they have accused French authorities of seeking to justify their shooting with false allegations.
No group has claimed the attempted attack so far, and no link to extremism was found during a search of the apartment. Moreover, after few days, Hamamy has broken the silence about his intentions, claiming that he acted of his own will and intended only to damage works of art at the gallery as a symbolic attack on France.
However, investigators do not fully believe his statements after they found out a series of tweets posted in Arabic few minutes be fore the assault was launched. In those posts, in which he exalted Allah and the creation of an Islamic State, he does not refer to ISIS by its Arabic acronym, Daesh, but used the phrase “Dawlat al-Islam”, which is commonly used to refer to the group’s territories by its supporters.
Egyptian officials, who are collaborating with French authorities, have declared that local security agencies are gathering information to help establish if he was a member of any militant groups or had been radicalised in the past. In the meantime, President Francois Holland has labelled the act as “clearly an act of terrorism” and prosecutors in Paris said they would ask judges to file preliminary charges of “attempted terrorist murder” and “terrorist criminal conspiracy”.
Since 2012 the country has struggled against Islamic terrorism, which has already caused 250 victims. A French mayor and member of the French National Assembly, Jaques Myard, has blamed the Schengen agreement, which allows traveling throughout much of the EU without border-controls. According to Mayard, France is in a dark place, as it has to face to threats: the threat of terrorists coming from abroad, and an internal threat, because of its large Muslims community. He reiterated that, although not all Muslims of course are radicals, over 10,000 of those could be radicalised across France. In those conditions it is impossible to really prevent anything, since it is impossible to have 100 per cent security everywhere. The only possible thing for citizens to do, Mayard added, is to be vigilant and always on guard, alerting the police every time they see something suspicious.

French Presidential Election: Hamon Wins Socialist Party Primary

On Sunday 29 January, France’s Socialists picked left-winger Benois Hamon as their candidate for president, however it is unlikely that them over will help them with the election. It could however boost the campaign of popular independent centrist Emmanuel Macron.

With 60 percent of the votes in the Socialists’ primary counted, the ex-education minister had won 58.65 percent against his rival Manuel Valls, a former prime minister who is closer to the centre ground and who embraces pro-business policies. The Socialists, which have been weakened and divided after the deeply unpopular presidency of Francois Hollande, have been given next to no chance of getting beyond the first round of the election in April. However by choosing the 49-year-old Hamon on Valls, they have given Macron a big group of middle-ground voters to aim at and a better chance of beating his close rivals on the right and far-right.

Sunday’s results have also shown the deep fractures in the Socialist camp. It takes the party back to the traditional pro-worker roots, which got Hollande elected in 2012 and it rejects the U-turn that he made mid-way through his mandate – the as-yet unsuccessful bid to jump-start growth and jobs by forcing through business-friendly reforms. Analysts are now warning that if Hamon fails to make an impact on the campaign, where the Socialist candidate trails behind four others in opinion polls, it could lead to the party having very little say for the next five years or even lead to tis breaking-up.

The Socialist primary effectively provided the last candidate for the election and the battle lines are now sharply drawn in the race for the two-stage election, which will be held on 23 April and 7 May. Conservative Francois Fillon, the Republicans’ candidate, and far-right leader Marine Le pen are still seen by opinion polls as being able to meet in the May runoff. However Fillon’s campaign has been thrown of track by a press report accusing him of employing his wife as a parliamentary assistant on a big salary without doing any work. He has denied the charges. Opinion polls have also shown that the campaign of Mr Macron is also gathering momentum, with analysts noting that he could still upset the balance. Th centrist former economy ministers says that he wants to bridge the Left and the Right and has shunned any party patronage. Political campaigners have indicated that the Socialists’ choice of Hamon, a traditional left-winger, will only favor Macron’s campaign, noting that supporters of the business-friendly policies, who like Macron has steered centrist policies, are likely to give their vote now to the popular former banker.

France’s Valls Stumbles in First Round of Primaries

Former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls called on Monday 23 January for a big turnout in the second round of the Socialist primaries after a first round vote on 22 January made left-wing rival Benoit Hamon frontrunner to represent the party in this year’s presidential election.

Late on Sunday, Valls said on RTL Radio “ to all those voters who believe in the Left, do not despair, mobilise.” Late on Sunday, he stated that the choice between Hamon and himself was one of “certain defeat and possible victory” in the presidential election.

Hamon, 48, is a traditional left-winger who was dismissed from the government by President Francois Hollande in 2014 for criticising his economic policies. According to partial results, Hamon won about 36 percent of the vote to Vall’s 31. The former education minister also secured the backing of Arnaud Montebourg, another left-winger, who came in third with 18 percent and was therefore eliminated along with four other candidates. The outcome of next Sunday’s head-to-head vote however remains uncertain.

Opinion polls show that no Socialist candidate is likely to win the presidency, indicating that conservative Francois Fillon is the favourite to win, with Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front (FN) coming in second place. Polls however also show that a victory for Hamon in next Sunday’s (29 January) Socialist primaries second round runoff against Valls could expose the centre ground to which Valls hopes to appeal, and thereby boosting the presidential prospects of independent centrist Emmanuel Macron.

French Presidential Election: New Polls Shows Fillon Beating Le Pen

A new poll released this month has indicated that French conservative Francois Fillon will beat far-right leader Marine Le Pen by 63 percent to 37 percent if they meet head to head in a presidential election runoff in May. The poll, which has a margin of error of 3.3 percent, was conducted by Internet from 6 – 8 January and was based on a sample of 946 people registered to vote.

The POP 2017 poll is in line with the findings of other surveys, which show Fillon losing momentum with his share of the vote in the first round, falling to 24 percent from as much as 27.5 percent a month ago. The poll showed him trailing National Front (FN) leader Le Pen by one or two percentage points in the first-round of the vote, which will take place on 23 April, but picking up enough votes from other defeated candidates, including from centrists among the Socialists, to comfortably defeat her in the 7 May runoff vote.

Furthermore, the poll also appeared to confirm that Emmanuel Macron, a popular former economy minister under Socialist President Francois Hollande who is running as an independent, might still be in a position to pull off a surprise. The poll has indicated that Macron is seen as coming in third place in the first round, with 16 – 20 percent of the vote, depending on which candidate the Socialists select for the party ticket in their primaries due to take place later this month. However he may be able to count on scooping up much of the 5 percent of the votes that the poll attributed to centrist Francois Bayrou if the latter decides not to run. Bayrou has social policies that are close to those of Macron and so his supporters may throw their weight behind the former investment banker. Bayrou has not yet disclosed whether he will run.

Polls Indicate that Left-Wing Voter Support has Increased for Former French PM Manuel Valls

A poll indicated on 7 December that left-leaning voter support for former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has increased ever since he announced earlier this month that he was seeking the Socialist nomination for the presidential election next spring. Valls made the announcement after current French President Francois Hollande indicated that he would not stand for a second term in office. He is France’s most unpopular president to date.

On 6 December, Valls resigned as head of President Hollande’s government to run in their party’s primary election in late January.  An Elabe poll for BFM TV found that one out of two leftist voters would vote for Valls in the first round of the presidential election. This is up by 14 percentage points from a month ago. It has also given Valls a solid lead over other high-profile leftist politicians to win the Socialist primary. When including voters from across the political spectrum, the Elabe poll found that former economy minister Emmanuel Macron, who is running as an independent, to be the most popular amongst left-wing candidates. Some 33 percent of those polled indicated that they would probably vote for Macron and 27 percent would vote for Valls.

However regardless who wins the party’s ticket, most opinion polls have indicated that a Socialist candidate will fail to pass the first round of voting, which will take place next April, with an expected runoff in May. Most polls say that conservative former prime minister Francois Fillon and far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen will come out on top of the first round of voting, with Fillon seen winning the runoff with about two-thirds of the vote.