French president calls for unity amid far right gains
French President Francois Hollande has called for unity following the recent record gains of the far-right National Front party in regional elections.
Hollande said there is for "clarity in the behavior and attitude of all political leaders to defend the values of the Republic.”
His comments came after Sunday’s first round of regional elections and ahead of the decisive second round which is due on December 13.
The results of the first round of voting showed the far-right National Front (FN), which wants to pull France out of the eurozone and end all immigration, had won almost 28 percent of the vote, taking the lead in six of France's 13 regions.
The right-wing opposition Republicans led by Hollande’s predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, scored 26 percent of the vote while the ruling Socialist Party and its allies scored only 23 percent.
Any win in the second round for the National Front would hand the party the control of a region or more in France for the first time since its founding in 1972, and act as a springboard for its leader Marine Le Pen ahead of France's 2017 presidential election.
Back in March, the National Front won the majority of votes in a number of towns in the French mayoral elections.
Those results and the current outcomes come while France is under a state of emergency as well as a long-running atmosphere of xenophobia.
Many believe the sweeping gains for the far-right ideas in France’s political sphere come mainly after the deadly terrorist attacks on a weekly magazine in Paris in January and the latest one in November that left scores of people dead in the capital, Paris.
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