PARIS — No more Muslim headscarves in public. All schoolchildren in uniforms. Laws proposed and passed by referendum. Generous social services unavailable to foreigners unless they’ve held a job for five years.
That’s just a sampling of Marine Le Pen’s vision for France if the far-right leader wins Sunday’s presidential runoff election against incumbent Emmanuel Macron. In all things, France, and the French, would come first.
Polls portray Macron as the front-runner in Sunday’s vote, but a Le Pen win is possible — an outcome that could rock France’s system of governance, strike fear among its immigrants and Muslims, jolt the dynamics of the 27-nation European Union, and unnerve NATO allies.
Macron, 44, a centrist who is ardently pro-EU, has relentlessly blasted his adversary as a danger and framed their election showdown as an ideological battle for the soul of the nation. Le Pen, 53, views Macron as a progressive technocrat for whom France is just a “region” of the EU.
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She says she would retool the country’s political system and the French Constitution to accommodate her populist agenda, putting the EU into second place and making France truer to its bedrock principles.
“I intend to be the president who gives the people back their voices in their own country,” Le Pen said.
Critics fear a threat to democracy…
