Penelope Fillon defends husband as he fights for political survival

The French presidential candidate François Fillon, who is mired in a “fake” jobs scandal, was to hold a major rally of supporters in Paris as he battles to keep his presidential hopes alive after refusing to step aside.

Ahead of the Sunday rally, seen as a last-ditch bid to salvage his candidacy, Fillon’s British wife, Penelope, broke her silence over the allegations that Fillon gave her and his children fake parliamentary jobs for large taxpayer-funded salaries.

In her first interview since the scandal broke, Penelope Fillon told Le Journal du Dimanche she had carried out “a lot of different tasks” for her husband and urged him to “keep going to the end”.

She said: “He needed someone to do a lot of different tasks, and if it wasn’t for me, he would have paid someone to do it, so we decided it would be me.”

With pressure building on Fillon, Penelope said she had urged her husband not to give up. “I said to him that he had to keep going to the end. Every day I told him that,” she said, adding it was up to him to decide.

Fillon’s party, Les Républicains, announced it was bringing forward by 24 hours a crisis meeting “to evaluate the situation” amid growing disquiet over his refusal to step aside.

Les Républicains announced its political decision-making body would meet on Monday evening. “Given the evolution of the political situation just seven weeks from the presidential election ... the political committee has been brought forward,” it said in a statement.

At a campaign meeting on Saturday afternoon, the centre-right candidate had been due to outline his programme. Instead, he launched into a general speech that lauded the virtue of liberty, the Frenchresistance, Joan of Arc, Voltaire and Victor Hugo, and lambasted the 35-hour working week and political correctness, among other “French handicaps”.

Taking the stage to a rendition of Happy Birthday from the audience, Fillon, 63, said: “Thank you. I’ve known better, and I will know better.”

He told those gathered: “I know France, I know the state it’s in ... I know its intellectual and political stalemate, because I’ve lived them.

“France is in the process of leaving the radar of history. We don’t even know what the term ‘progress’ means and, worse still, the word causes us anguish.” He added: “We are our own worst enemy.”

Supporters, waving tricolor flags, cheered and clapped each time he paused, chanting “Fillon, président”.

Fillon has been under increasing pressure since the end of January when the Canard Enchaîné newspaper revealed that his wife and two of his children, Marie and Charles, had been paid large sums of money to work as his parliamentary assistants, allegedly without evidence that they had fulfilled any job.

Until then Fillon had been a clear favourite to become France’s next president in May. He has apologised but insists he did nothing wrong. After the scandal broke, he asked supporters to be patient and wait for the result of a preliminary investigation, promising he would stand down if officially mis en examen – the nearest thing in French law to being charged or arraigned.

On Wednesday, Fillon went back on that pledge. In a hastily arranged press conference, he declared he had been summoned by three judges “with a view” to being mis en examen, but insisted he would continue his presidential campaign.

At Saturday’s meeting, he made only a passing reference to his legal woes in the 30-minute address, saying: “This campaign is a strange battle. You are brave but you are being intimidated. They are attacking me, but what they are really trying to attack is our national recovery.”

Fillon has been completely ignoring increasingly loud calls to stand down and let the centre-right Les Républicains party choose another candidate.

High-profile supporters, including his campaign director and spokesman, as well as almost 200 MPs and political personalities, have withdrawn their support. As a result, Fillon’s presidential bid is looking doomed. The first round of the presidential election takes place on 23 April.

At Aubervilliers, outside Paris, on Saturday more than 2,500 Fillon supporters were expected to hear him speak. As the audience waited for the candidate to arrive, a woman heckled: “Resign Fillon” from the audience and was removed by security officials.

Fillon and his remaining team are now pinning their political hopes on a rally to be held in central Paris on Sunday.

In a video, posted on his Twitter account, Fillon requested his supporters attend in “very large numbers”. Attacking his rivals, he said nothing he had seen or heard of their programmes was sufficient “to restore France’s strength”.

“I tell you with gravity, don’t be fooled, don’t let anyone rob you of your choice. I ask you to resist.”

Demonstrators have been asked not to carry placards or signs criticising the judges or the media, two targets Fillon has blamed for his legal woes.

Fillon has been summoned to appear before judges on 15 March, two days before the final day for candidates to be officially declared. To be eligible they must have gathered 500 signatures from local mayors and political representatives.

With AFP and Reuters