French President Francois Hollande said Dec. 1 he will not seek another term, which cleared the path for a presidential bid by his pro-Israel prime minister, Manuel Valls.
In turn, Valls announced Dec. 5 that he will seek the presidency in next year’s election. If successful in a faceoff against others running for the Socialist Party’s candidacy, he likely will face Francois Fillon of the Republican Party and Marine Le Pen of the far-right Front National in the first round of the presidential election next spring.
Hollande is the first president to decide not to run for a second term in at least five decades; polls give him a single-digit approval rating.
Valls, who is married to a Jewish woman, violinist Anne Gravoin, is the first French prime minister who publicly denounced anti-Zionism as a form of or portal to anti-Semitism. His strong statements in favor of Israel and French Jewry have allowed him to consolidate considerable popularity and support among French Jews.
He received a hero’s welcome on Jan. 11, 2015, when he was among the few politicians who showed up at the Hyper Cacher in eastern Paris to join the thousands of French Jews who had gathered there hours after a jihadist gunned down four shoppers inside the kosher supermarket.
Valls, who is seen as a hardliner on law-and-order issues, is said to be the favorite to become the left-wing Socialist Party’s candidate. — jta