Melenchon Crashes Front-Runners’ Party as French Risks Rise
- The left-wing candidate counts Chavez, Castro among his heros
- Poll gain may be capped by zero-sum game with Hamon supporters
Supporter Says Melenchon Doing a 'Happy Campaign'
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Under a cloudless blue sky at an outdoor waterfront rally of 30,000 people in Marseille on Sunday, Jean-Luc Melenchon showed why his rise in French polls is spooking markets.
Speaking without a teleprompter or notes and using his trademark mix of humor and anger, the Communist-backed far-left candidate of the France Unbowed party regaled the gathering with the evils of “extreme markets that are transforming suffering, misery and abandonment into gold and money.” He alluded to France as a country “with huge wealth that is badly distributed,” denounced the U.S. air strikes in Syria and called for France to leave NATO.