The French establishment will choose one of two fake “conservatives” to put up against the Front National’s Marine le Pen in the 2017 presidential election: Alain Juppé, a convicted embezzler who had been barred from holding public office, and François Fillon, an open supporter of the Islamic colonization of France.

Juppé was convicted in 2004 of embezzling public funds, sentenced to prison, and barred from holding public office for ten years, while Fillon personally inaugurated France’s largest mosque in 2010, and at the opening ceremony, spoke glowingly of the Islamic colonization of that country.

The move to put the two fake conservatives forward was taken after opinion polls showed that the till then preferred “conservative” candidate, former president Nicolas Sarkozy, would be utterly defeated by Le Pen.

As a result, Sarkozy was unceremoniously booted out of the French “conservative” primaries held last week, losing his party’s (Les Républicains) nomination battle by a landslide. Fillon will now face Juppé in Les Républicains primary run-off on November 27.

It is generally acknowledged that Le Pen will certainly win the first round of the presidential elections, but faces a struggle to win the second, which is held if no one candidate takes more than 50 percent of the vote during the first round.

The second round is held between only the first and second placed candidates from the first round, and in such circumstances it has become standard practice for the communists, liberals, and conservatives to suddenly realize that they are all actually the same, and then vote against any FN candidate.

Fillon’s nomination has however merely given more ammunition to the FN campaign. The party immediately started reminding voters that when Fillon was Prime Minister of France, he had personally inaugurated the largest mosque in France and had spoken glowingly of Islam as “France’s second religion.”

According to a transcript of his speech, given on June 28, 2010, when he cut the ribbon to mark the opening of the largest mosque in France in Argenteuil, northwest Paris, Fillon said that Islam had made an “essential contribution to the industrial development of our country” and that the “Argenteuil New Mosque reflects the vitality of the Muslim community in France.”

“I want to tell you how you can, how you should be proud of this achievement, which reflects the serene registration of Islam in the national landscape.”

Fillon went on to boast that the number of mosques in France had risen from 100 in 1970, to over 2,000 in 2010, and that the “French Council of the Muslim Faith is definitely part of our institutional landscape.”

Juppé, on the other hand, was Prime Minister of France from 1995 to 1997 under President Jacques Chirac, during which period he faced major strikes that paralyzed the country, and he personally became very unpopular.

In 2004, Juppé was tried for the felony of abuse of public funds, when he illegally used personnel provided by the City of Paris for running the operations of his then party, the Rassemblement pour la République (“Rally for the Republic”).

He was convicted and sentenced to an 18-month suspended jail sentence, the deprivation of civic rights for five years, and the deprivation of the right to run for political office for 10 years.

Upon appeal, the disqualification from holding elected office was reduced to one year and the suspended sentence cut to 14 months.

Whoever wins the Les Républicains nomination—most likely to be Fillon—will go up against Marine le Pen. The far left is too weak to stand any chance at all, and so the second round will therefore be between one of these two fake conservatives and Marine le Pen.

While all official opinion polls still show the second round combined communist/liberal/conservative vote beating Le Pen, some political observers have predicted that a surprise upset is possible.