One wants to ban Pokeman Go, another lays claim to knowing France the best of all 11 candidates for president after criss-crossing the country on foot for nine months. But with the main candidates hogging the limelight in a rollercoaster race full of upsets and scandals, the underdogs are struggling for the voter’s ear.
Thanks to France’s strict electoral rules on equal time, the candidates who are scoring in the low single digits have been enjoying a somewhat higher profile in the final two weeks before voters cast their first ballots on April 23.
Trotskyist Nathalie Arthaud, who says she has no interest in actually becoming President, seizes every chance at the microphone to attack the “power of money” with gusto.
Ms. Arthaud, a schoolteacher, has a soulmate in Philippe Poutou, the only other candidate with a “normal” job — in his case as a mechanic at a Ford factory where he is also a union leader.
In an April 4 debate among all 11 candidates, Mr. Poutou pleaded for the “millions who suffer in this society and are sick to death of this capitalist steamroller that destroys everything in its path”.
Also running “against the political elite that has made a pact with the empire of money” is 75-year-old Jacques Cheminade, even though he attended the training ground for France’s elite, the Ecole Nationale d’Administration.
Running for a third time after winning 0.25% of the vote in 2012, the retired civil servant who is the oldest candidate in the race has opted for a more down-to-earth approach after being written off as an oddball five years ago for proposing the colonisation of Mars. One of his pledges this time around is to ban Pokemon Go, saying the virtual treasure hunt is an "expression of the mental state of our society that is both ridiculous and appalling”.
