PARIS — France’s opposition UMP party votes Sunday to pick a successor to ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy after a bitter battle that will determine whether it veers to the right -- or even the far right -- or holds to the centre.



The cautious, staid Francois Fillon, who was prime minister for five years until Sarkozy was ousted by the Socialist Francois Hollande in May, is squaring off against Jean-Francois Cope, the party’s populist secretary-general.



The man closest to the hearts of UMP followers remains Sarkozy himself, according to an IFOP opinion poll that said that two-thirds of them hope he will make a comeback and run for the presidency in 2017.



Sarkozy has hinted he might do just that, but in his absence it is Fillon who is favorite to take a majority of the 300,000 votes of UMP members.



The 58-year-old is conservative on economic issues but inclusive on social matters. He argues that Cope’s bid to attract the five million French who voted for the far-right National Front in the presidential election risks splitting the UMP.



Cope, 48, has taken up where Sarkozy left off, unabashed in his bid to woo voters from the National Front, whose historically strong score at the polls split the right-wing vote and torpedoed Sarkozy’s re-election bid.



His rallies have focused on themes that Sarkozy relentlessly pushed, such as immigration and the growing number of Muslims in France, which has Europe’s biggest Islamic community.



He last month published “A Manifesto for an Uninhibited Right”, in which he argued that the poor immigrant suburbs of French cities had become havens of “anti-white racism”.



Cope, whom critics dub “Sarkozy light” and who has promised to stand aside if his mentor seeks re-election in 2017, followed that up with a tweet about a boy who had his chocolate cake snatched from him by “thugs” who were apparently enforcing the Muslim Ramadan fast.



Cope’s provocative rhetoric shocks many centered-minded UMP supporters, as did Sarkozy’s before him. — AFP