France has awoken, declares Melenchon ahead of Sunday’s Presidential vote

Radical left Jean Luc Melenchon called on tens of thousands assembled in Paris Thursday night to vote for the Left Front in Sunday’s Presidential elections to ‘chase’ Nicolas Sarkozy from power and help put an end to the ‘Merkozy axis in the heart of Austerity Europe’.

Melenchon, at 13-15% in the polls, said voting for him would also strike a blow at the extreme right National Front led by Marine Le Pen and her politics of ‘hate’.

‘France has awoken, the fire is roaring, we’ve grilled their behinds’, declared the former Socialist Party minister who many polls put in third place in the polls behind the socialist Francois Hollande and incumbent right wing Sarkozy.

Pierre Laurent, leader the French Communist Party that is a central force in the Left Front, called on voters to tell ‘all the profiteers in finance who have been gorging themselves these past twenty years that the game is up’ and to ‘send President Sarkozy and his club of millionaires packing’.

Both Laurent and Melenchon reiterated that the Left Front would remain an ‘independent and demanding’ force should elections go, as expected, to a second round run off in May.

Melenchon has said that the Left Front would call on its supporters to back Hollande in a second round against Sarkozy but there would be strings attached.

Legislative elections are due to take place in June and in the event of a socialist victory in the Presidential elections there are strong odds in favour of a Socialist led government.
The socialists have already begun talking about possible participation of Left Front in such a government.

Laurent stated Thursday the Left Front would expect a referendum on the new EU treaty, the Fiscal Compact, which he and and Melenchon oppose.