Far-right Le Pen to stand in French elections

French far-right candidate Marine Le Pen has secured the backing of enough local government officials to run in the two-round presidential election, party sources said on Monday. Le Pen, who heads the anti-immigrant National Front party, now has the required 500 signatures from local mayors and other elected officials to stand in the April-May vote, the sources said.
"I have just spoken to her on the telephone and she confirmed it to me," lawyer Gilbert Collard, the head of Le Pen's supporters' committee, told France 2 public television.



Although opinion polls give Le Pen between 16 and 18 per cent of the national vote, there was speculation that few mayors or regional councillors wanted to take the political risk of associating themselves with her campaign. France's Constitutional Council last month rejected Le Pen's plea to make the sponsorships anonymous. All French presidential candidates must have the signed endorsement of 500 elected local officials - of which there are around 42,000 in France - by a March 16 deadline.
Polls put Sarkozy ahead
President Nicolas Sarkozy pulled ahead of his Socialist rival for the first time in France's election race Tuesday, according to a poll conducted after the right-winger took a strident anti-EU turn.
The survey forecasts that Sarkozy would lead in the first round but still lose out to Francois Hollande in the second, but it was a symbolic boost for the leader who had consistently trailed his rival for the past five months
Sarkozy’s spokeswoman claimed there was "panic" among the Socialists after the Ifop poll that said the president would would win 28.5 per cent of the vote in the first round in April, against 27 per cent for Hollande.
Hollande, who has never held a ministerial post and whose ex-partner Segolene Royal lost to Sarkozy in 2007, is still on course to win the second round in May with 54.5 per cent against Sarkozy's 45.5 per cent, the poll said.
"It's a turning point … but a nuanced turning point," Frederic Dabi of Ifop told AFP.
Socialist former minister Jack Lang played down the survey's importance, deeming it "abnormal" that an incumbent be as low in the polls as is Sarkozy.
"Let's not get taken in or too excited by this or that poll," he said.
The survey of 1,638 people was carried out by telephone, shortly after tens of thousands of Sarkozy supporters turned up in a Paris suburb on Sunday for his biggest campaign rally so far.