Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, who is standing in elections on Sunday, fell after man threw leaflets in her face in market

A French politician and candidate in this Sunday’s parliamentary elections was left unconscious after an altercation with a protester while out campaigning.

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, a former government minister who unsuccessfully stood to be mayor of Paris, was approached and insulted by a passerby as the candidate handed out leaflets in a market in the city.

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When the man, described as middle-aged, grabbed the leaflets and tried to throw them in her face, NKM, as she is known, put her hand up to protect herself, then appeared to lose her balance and fall.

Witnesses said the man, who shouted that she was a “shitty bobo”, a shortened term for a bourgeois-bohemian that is often used as an insult to the city’s wealthy middle-class professionals, ran off into the nearby Métro when he saw her collapse on the ground.

According to an Agence France-Presse journalist, NKM is thought to have hit her head on the ground, causing her to black out for several minutes. She was brought round by paramedics and taken to hospital, where the prime minister, Édouard Philippe, visited her.

“I condemn this act of unacceptable violence,” said Philippe, who hails from Kosciusko-Morizet’s Les Républicains party.

NKM, 44, a former environment minister in Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right government, hopes to be elected in the second round of France’s legislative elections on Sunday. She faces a battle against Gilles Le Gendre, from La République en Marche, President Emmanuel Macron’s party.

An official inquiry for “deliberate violence” has been opened into the incident, which happened at a market in Paris’s chic 5th arrondissement. A member of the candidate’s election team, Jean-Baptiste Goulard, chased the man, who ran into the Métro. Goulard told police the man hit him before running off.

Le Gendre later announced he was suspending his campaign because of what had happened to his opponent.



How does France's parliamentary election system work? The electoral system for France's 577-seat parliament, the Assemblée Nationale, is designed to favour larger parties and make things difficult for smaller ones, who would mostly prefer proportional representation. Like the country's presidential poll, it takes place over two rounds – this year, on 11 and 18 June. It is possible for candidates to win in the first round, providing at least 25% of the voters registered in their constituency turn out and they secure more than 50% of the vote. For the remaining seats, the second round is contested by the two best-placed candidates after the first round, with any others who secured more than 12.5% of the vote.

La République En Marche and its ally MoDem (Democratic Movement) won 32.32% in the first round of the parliamentary elections last weekend, ahead of Les Républicains and its allies on 21.56% and the far-right Front National on 13.20%. The Socialist party took 9.5% of the vote with its allies.