Sarkozy rules out Front National ministers but chases far-right's votes

There will be no deal with Le Pen’s party and it will not have any ministers in a mainstream right government if Sarkozy is reelected on 6 May, the president told France Info radio Wednesday.

Presidential election 2012

But, with 6.4 million votes going begging in a run-off against Socialist Party (PS) candidate François Hollande, the incumbent was ready to declare the FN “a democratic party”, since it is allowed to stand in elections.

Its voters should not be stigmatised, he said, they had cast “a crisis vote, a vote of anger” and he promised to “listen to them”.

Sarkozy caused uproar in the left-inclined press when he declared at a rally in Longjumeau, near Paris, that Le Pen is “compatible with the republic” and the FN vote was “not reprehensible”.

Finance Minister François Baroin complained of “intellectual terrorism” after Libération printed the quote with a picture of Sarkozy on its front page and Communist l’Humanité compared the incumbent’s attacks on the unions to statements by Nazi collaborator Marshal Philippe Pétain.

Who won where in French presidential first round? Click to enlarge the map

The authoritative afternoon paper Le Monde followed with an angry editorial slamming Sarkozy for a “political and moral” failing and accusing him of adopting “the language, the rhetoric and now the ideas, or rather the obsessions, of M [Jean-Marie] and Mme Le ¨Pen”.

“We have always fought the Front National,” he said on Europe 1 radio. “There is not, there has never been, there will never be an alliance with the Front National.”

But Le Pen wants to know where Sarkozy’s UMP will stand in legislative elections expected to take place on 10 and 17 June.

On Tuesday Prime Minister François Fillon declared “stupid” a declaration by UMP Senator and former minister Chantal Jouanno that she would vote Socialist rather than FN if faced with the choice in a run-off for a parliamentary seat.

Like the presidential election, French parliamentary polls go to two rounds with a run-off of two or three leading parties.

Le Pen on Wednesday called on Sarkozy and UMP leader Jean-François Copé to “clearly state if they would call for a Socialist vote in constituencies where the FN faces the Socialists”.

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In cantonal elections last year, Sarkozy and Copé refused to back either side in FN-PS run-offs but they have yet to express an opinion on the question in relation to this year’s parliamentary election.

Hollande, too, demanded to know where the UMP stands on the question, accusing Sarkozy of trying to attract not just the voters but also the leaders of the far right.