Paris:Â France's far-right presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen says she is temporarily stepping down as head of her National Front party.
Monday's move appears to be a way for Le Pen to embrace a wide range of potential voters ahead of the May 7 run-off between herself and Emmanuel Macron, the independent centrist who came in first in Sunday's first round.
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Le Pen quits National Front presidency
Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen says she is temporarily stepping aside from the leadership of her party, the National Front, to "unite" the French people.
"Tonight, I am no longer the president of the National Front. I am the presidential candidate," she said on French public television news.
Le Pen has said in the past that she is not a candidate of her party, and made that point when she rolled out her platform in February, saying the measures she was espousing were not her party's, but her own.
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Le Pen has worked to bring in voters from the left and right for several years, cleaning up her party's racist, anti-Semitic image to do so.
Most of her rivals have gathered around the effort to defeat Le Pen. Only one major candidate has resisted calls to unite against her: Jean-Luc Melenchon, the firebrand hard-left candidate who came in fourth and who has pointedly refused to support Macron, saying instead that he would seek the opinion of his supporters through his website. Similarly, traditionalist Roman Catholic organisations that backed Conservative Francois Fillon refused to endorse Macron on Monday.
Some of Le Pen's advisers said, in interviews in French media on Monday, that they were hoping to lure some of the supporters of the defeated Melenchon, whose populist program bore similarities to that of Le Pen: hostility to the European Union, NATO and the forces of globalisation; and a forgiving attitude toward Russia's president, Vladimir Putin.
Many of Melenchon's supporters may have little fondness for Le Pen, but in interviews they expressed equal disdain for the pro-free market Macron. "For me, Le Pen, Macron, it's the same," said Olivia Scemama, a musician from the 18th Arrondissement of Paris who said she voted for Melenchon on Sunday. "With Macron, it's the extremism of banks, of finance."
Stock markets opened higher on Monday across Europe, a sign that investors were relieved by Macron's strong showing. Le Pen wants France to leave the euro currency zone, a prospect that created unease on international markets in the prelude to the first round of voting.
Few analysts say they expect Le Pen to win in the second round. Polls released on Monday showed that about 60 per cent of voters supported Macron, compared with less than 40 per cent for Le Pen. A live televised debate between Le Pen and Macron is set for May 3.
AP, New York Times
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