The French presidential campaign has entered its last feverish phase, and as usual sparks are flying thick and hard. This is an election which the entire Europe and the world were watching with bated breath – were watching because the 48-year-old far-right populist Marine Le Pen came threateningly close to capturing power once, but now there is huge relief because she is trailing far behind her opponent, the 39-year-old centrist upstart Emmanuel Macron, with the latest surveys showing his lead widening to around 62 percent to 38.As the world wants, the French are emphatically rejecting the hatred peddled by Le Pen and are rallying behind Macron whose agenda focuses on the vital challenges France is facing. Today, France will hold its presidential runoff and give Macron a chance to work on his promises.
This is an election of surprises. After decades of choosing between mainstream candidates of the centre-left and center-right, the voters have rejected both and gravitated to Macron and Le Pen. Le Pen’s popularity too rose to levels not seen before, but most voters are aware of the dangers of electing an anti-immigrant, anti-European Union and anti-free trade leader.
But just two days before the runoff, there are forces working to discredit Macron and sabotage his chances. As much as nine gigabytes of data purporting to be documents from the Macron campaign - emails, documents and campaign financing information – were posted online just before campaigning ended on Friday. The data leak emerged as polls predicted Macron’s victory. It was not clear who was responsible, but it was clear the hack was an attempt to destabilise democracy and to damage the party. France is the latest nation to see a major election being overshadowed by allegations of manipulation through cyberhacking. US intelligence agencies said in January that Russia had tried to influence the presidential election in favour of Republican candidate Donald Trump by ordering the hacking of online data belonging to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. But the latest cyberhacking sends a powerful message to the hackers – that their heinous crime will not meet its objective as the world is more vigilant. The French election commission acted promptly to minimize damage from the leak. “The commission calls on everyone present on internet sites and social networks, primarily the media, but
also all citizens, to show responsibility and not to pass on this content, so as not to distort the sincerity of the ballot,” it said in a statement. Also, most of the French television channels decided not to report the contents of the leaked documents.
