PARIS: Some 30,000 police will be deployed across France late on Sunday following the high-stakes runoff of a parliamentary election to ensure there is no trouble, a minister said, as three candidates said they had been victims of attacks on the campaign trail.
Sunday’s second round will determine whether Marine Le Pen‘s far-right National Rally (RN) secures a parliamentary majority for the first time and forms the next govt in France.
The campaign has been marred by political tensions but also growing violence.
Interior minister Gerald Darmanin said he would be “very careful” about security on Sunday, when the election’s results will be announced.
Some 5,000 of the 30,000 police deployed that evening will be located in Paris and its surroundings, and they will “ensure that the radical right and radical left do not take advantage of the situation to cause mayhem”, he told France 2 TV.
Darmanin said four people had been arrested over an attack that occurred on Wednesday evening on govt spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot and her team, when they were out putting up campaign posters. While Thevenot herself was not harmed, her deputy and a party activist were injured by an unidentified group of about 10 youths who were defacing campaign posters, Thevenot told Le Parisien newspaper.
An RN candidate in Savoie, Marie Dauchy, also said she had been attacked by a shopkeeper at a market on Wednesday.
Separately, the 77-year old deputy mayor of a small town near Grenoble, in southeastern France, was punched in the face on Thursday morning when putting up a poster for Olivier Veran, a former spokesman for Prez Emmanuel Macron. Veran denounced a “completely unprecedented context of violence in this campaign”.
Sunday’s second round will determine whether Marine Le Pen‘s far-right National Rally (RN) secures a parliamentary majority for the first time and forms the next govt in France.
The campaign has been marred by political tensions but also growing violence.
Interior minister Gerald Darmanin said he would be “very careful” about security on Sunday, when the election’s results will be announced.
Some 5,000 of the 30,000 police deployed that evening will be located in Paris and its surroundings, and they will “ensure that the radical right and radical left do not take advantage of the situation to cause mayhem”, he told France 2 TV.
Darmanin said four people had been arrested over an attack that occurred on Wednesday evening on govt spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot and her team, when they were out putting up campaign posters. While Thevenot herself was not harmed, her deputy and a party activist were injured by an unidentified group of about 10 youths who were defacing campaign posters, Thevenot told Le Parisien newspaper.
An RN candidate in Savoie, Marie Dauchy, also said she had been attacked by a shopkeeper at a market on Wednesday.
Separately, the 77-year old deputy mayor of a small town near Grenoble, in southeastern France, was punched in the face on Thursday morning when putting up a poster for Olivier Veran, a former spokesman for Prez Emmanuel Macron. Veran denounced a “completely unprecedented context of violence in this campaign”.
