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CNN Live At Daybreak

Demonstrations in Paris for Jean-Marie Le Pen, Extreme Right- Wing Candidate For President

Aired May 01, 2002 - 05:08   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: It is May Day. In Paris and other European cities, that means demonstrations to celebrate labor. But those aren't the demonstrations police are primarily concerned about.

CNN's Jim Bitterman is live in Paris this morning -- Jim, I can see all the people behind you. What's going on?

JIM BITTERMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is a demonstration that police are definitely worried about. This is the demonstration, one of five demonstrations here in Paris today, for Jean-Marie Le Pen, the extreme right-wing candidate for president. It's his traditional demonstration, but this year, of course, he's a presidential candidate, which has changed things a little bit. In fact, it's brought a lot more people out on the street. It has also produced these other four demonstrations with people protesting his candidacy and actually out there trying to oppose him in the presidency.

Mr. Le Pen himself joined the march in this direction towards the Place de la Opera, where I'm standing, a little while ago. He is marching through the streets of Paris and he is set to arrive here within the hour, at which time we expect he will deliver, if he holds to past tradition, a rousing pro-nationalist speech.

Now, not everybody in Paris, of course, supports Mr. Le Pen. In fact, those other four demonstrations that I mentioned are against him. We talked to some students who are going to march earlier and asked them exactly why they are opposed to Mr. Le Pen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am happy to see that people are mobilized against Le Pen and the National Front. We have values to defend. It is more than just politics. The issue is to defend our French and Republican values. This is the base France wants these days. People have abandoned their civic duties. They have abandoned politics, giving the impression that the country is devoid of the kind of people who made France. I believe, in fact, now is the time when the issue is to defend this fragile thing that is democracy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is important to mobilize against the far right and its ideas. If we do not mobilize, they will grow. We do not agree with those ideas, which are reactionist and fascist. We have to mobilize every day to fight against those ideas. It's not just because of the vote on Sunday. They will keep growing and it is in every day life that we have to fight them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BITTERMAN: There you have a picture of some of the police who are out here trying to keep everybody separated, 3,500 French police on the streets today trying to keep these rival demonstrations apart. They're actually in slightly different parts of town and they're taking place at slightly different times. However, there's going to be an awful lot of people on the streets of Paris and the police are really concerned there could be some kind of problem -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Is there any sense there that support for Le Pen is growing?

BITTERMAN: Well, one of the things that we got just a couple of days ago was the last poll, which does show that his support is growing over what he had in the first round of the election. They're now putting his support as high as 29 percent of the electorate. We won't know exactly until those elections on Sunday. But there is some sense that for those elections he may get as high as 29 percent.

Mr. Le Pen himself said that if he didn't break 30 percent, it would be a failure for him. So he's fully expecting to do better than 29 percent. It's very difficult to know. One of the things that the polls, pollsters tell us is that it's difficult to measure his support because people aren't honest when they talk about whether or not they support him. They're kind of embarrassed about supporting him and so they don't tell the pollsters the truth, necessarily. The pollsters put in a fudge factor and the fudge factor isn't always accurate.

So they've been notoriously wrong in the past, as they were last Sunday, or 10 days ago on Sunday when the elections were held here and they miscalled the elections very badly -- Carol.

COSTELLO: That they did. Well, we'll see what happens on Sunday.

Thank you.

Jim Bitterman reporting live for us from Paris this morning. It looks like he's going to have a busy day.

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