Over three-and-a-half hours of fast-paced debate on Monday March 20,2017 evening, France’s five leading presidential candidates laid down the gauntlet for the first face-to-face showdown of this roller coaster campaign.
With the candidates arrayed in a gladiator-style arena setting, France’s first-ever candidates debate held before the first round of a presidential election was an eminently watchable spectacle with sweeping scope. Candidates clashed heartily over education, security, secularism, campaign financing and France’s place in Europe while broaching a range of social, economic and -- in a segment apparently truncated after the debate ran well past midnight Paris time -- international issues.
But in an election that has been exceptionally unpredictable to date, Monday night’s unprecedented contest may bring something this campaign has lacked: stability.
Frontrunners Emmanuel Macron the independent centrist neophyte, and Marine Le Penn, the far-right political veteran, dominated the proceedings, while the Socialist and conservative candidates punching below their political parties’ traditional electoral weight in the polls are unlikely to have inspired the bounce they desperately needed from their performances.
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