Francois Fillon’s party has apologized for tweeting a caricature of Emmanuel Macron, his main rival in the race to be France’s next president, that Fillon himself admitted was anti-Semitic.
Fillon’s conservative The Republicans tweeted an image of the independent centrist Macron with a hooked nose, wearing a top hat and carrying a red sickle with which he was cutting a cigar.
The image resembled anti-Semitic propaganda from World War II when France’s Vichy government collaborated with the Nazis. Macron is not Jewish, but the cartoon appeared to refer to his past as a Rothschild investment banker.
A day after the tweet was posted — and subsequently deleted — Fillon called the image “unacceptable” and said he understood the outrage it had caused “because it evoked the images of a dark period of our history.
“Politics is tough but it must remain dignified,” Fillon tweeted, saying he had demanded his party chief apologize and sanction the people responsible.
A spokeswoman for Macron declined to comment.
Fillon, once considered the favorite to win the presidency, has been badly damaged by a financial scandal and now lies in third place behind Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the April 23 first round.
Only the top two candidates will go through to a run-off on May 7.

Source: Arab News