French press review 27 May 2017

Will a controversial property deal dogging Emmanuel Macron's top ally Richard Ferrand spoil the new French President's ethics reform agenda?

"Moralizing public life: what is going to change".

That's the splash in today's Le Figaro. The conservative daily obviously keen on piling pressure on Richard Ferrand - President Emmanuel Macron's closest ally - who is under fire from an army of political opponents to step down after revelations about a property deal

The satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné  claims that Ferrand handed a rental contract worth 400,000 euros to his partner during his time as director general of a public health insurance fund in his native Brittany region.

Ferrand is the man Macron picked to push through his flagship reform on improving ethical standards in public life.

With the socialists and the conservatives still reeling from their first round elimination in the just ended Presidential election, it's no surprise that Le Figaro is going after Ferrand days away from legislative elections on June 8th which President Macron's party must win to secure a governing majority.

According to the conservative publication, if Richard Ferrand in charge of national cohesion is forced to resign, from the government it will be hard for President Macron to justify his crusade for moral rectitude in politics.

That, according to Le Figaro, will throw open another question, just how long Macron can remain squeaky clean.

L'Est Républicain is quick to explain that the judiciary has madeit clear that it will not investigate the senior Minister for the suspected case of collusion and influence peddling.

But as the regional newspaper points out, what that means is that Emmanuel Macron will not be able to implement the plan of action proposed by anti-graft lawmaker René Dosière, who spent his 29 years in parliament pointing to flaws in the house rules and regulations which allowed graft to thrive in politics.

La Charente Libre denounces Prime Minister Edouard Philippe's attempt to water down the allegations facing Richard Ferrand after he urged voters in the Minister's constituency not to be so-called peaceful judges during the political debate leading up to next week's parliamentary elections.

What Philippe's so-called “Pontius Pilatism” betrays, it says, is the sense of deep embarrassment the Ferrand affair is causing the executive.

According to Midi Libre, the issue that needs to be settled over coming days is not Ferrand's resignation but how badly it will affect his electorate and if it could become a millstone to President Macron's On the Move party come the June 8 parliamentary elections.

Meanwhile, left-leaning Libération says that beyond the major upheaval it has caused and the still emerging consequences, it will be credited for displaying the real face of the National Front.

The far-right party's leader Marine Le Pen it argues, had been trying to dissimulate her shortcomings through a strategy of demonization, which ended up revealing its limits. According to Libé, the ploy to make the party look citizens' friendly and rid of its old fossils flopped woefully.

Libération claims that the FN remains on the extreme right fringes of national politics as ever, authoritarian, cliquey, undemocratic in its ways and guided by paranoia coupled with its leaders' "unquenchable thirst for power".