Front National candidate Laurent Lopez waves to supporters as he arrives with party deputy Marion Marechal-Le Pen after winning the second round of the local by-election in Brignoles. Photo: AFP
France’s far-right National Front has won a bellwether local byelection in the country’s south, riding on discontent with Francois Hollande’s Socialist presidency and disarray in the opposition UMP party to a victory it believes will be a springboard towards the political mainstream.
Laurent Lopez, the clean-cut 48-year-old candidate for the Provence town of Brignoles, scored 54 per cent of the vote to the centre-right UMP’s 46 per cent in the second-round run-off.
Marine Le Pen, who took over the National Front leadership from her father and party founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, said after the result was announced on Sunday night it was a ”beautiful victory” that showed ”when united, the French are invincible”. ”It shows a willingness for change among the French,” she said.
Brignoles attracted national interest when Mr Lopez knocked out left-wing rivals in the first-round vote and took twice as many votes as the UMP, the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy.
The National Front, which took 6.4 million votes in last year’s presidential vote, is normally a magnet for protest votes. Miss Le Pen, however, has tried to change its image as a movement of racists and anti-Semites, increasingly reaching out to disgruntled mainstream voters with tough talk on crime and immigration, as well as capitalising on the struggling economy.
Miss Le Pen was recently placed joint third in a table of politicians the French want to see more of in the future.
The unpopular Socialist government and the deeply divided UMP are alarmed by the rise of the National Front, whose next major political test will be municipal elections in March in which Miss Le Pen hopes to build a strong local base by winning seats on local councils.
Telegraph, London; AFP
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Allons~Y~~~Mes Enfants~~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tN2j-PBGF0
Marine Le Pen (French pronunciation: [ma.ʁin lə.pɛn]; born Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen; 5 August 1968) is a French political leader, who is a lawyer by profession, a French politician and the president of the Front National (FN), the third-largest political party in France, since 16 January 2011. She is the youngest daughter of the French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen, former president of the FN and currently its honorary chairman. She is the aunt of Marion Maréchal-Le Pen.
She joined the FN in 1986, its Executive Committee in 2000 and was a vice-president of the FN for eight years (2003–2011). She currently is an ex officio member of the FN Executive Office, Executive Committee and Central Committee.
She has been a regional councillor since 1998 (Île-de-France: 2004–2010, Nord-Pas-de-Calais: 1998–2004, 2010–present), a Member of the European Parliament since 2004 (Île-de-France: 2004–2009, North-West France: 2009–present) and was a municipal councillor in Hénin-Beaumont, Pas-de-Calais for three years (2008–2011).
In 2010, she was a candidate for the leadership of the FN set up by Jean-Marie Le Pen on 5 October 1972.[1][2][3][4] She successfully succeeded him during the FN congress in Tours, Indre-et-Loire.[5][6][7] On 16 January 2011, she was elected with 67.65% (11,546 votes) as the second president of the Front National.[8]
She is described as a significantly more democratic and republican presence than her nationalist father; she wants to considerably reduce immigration, while her father wanted to abolish it. However, like her father, she strongly opposes same-sex marriage andeuthanasia.
On 21 April 2011, she was ranked 71 in the most influential person in the 2011 Time 100.[9]
She was a candidate in the 2012 French presidential election.[10] On 22 April 2012, she polled 17.90% (6,421,426 votes) in the first round and finished in third position behind François Hollande and incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy.[11][12][13]
Marine Le Pen represented the FN as the FN leader at the legislative election in Pas-de-Calais’ 11th constituency, on 14 May 2012.[14]She lost the race by about 100 votes.[15]
“Jean-Marie Le Pen is a friend. He is dangerous for the political set because he’s the only one who’s sincere. He says out loud what many people think deep down, and what the politicians refrain from saying because they are either too demagogic or too chicken. Le Pen, with all his faults and qualities, is probably the only one who thinks about the interests of France before his own.”~~French actor Alain Delon
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AFP – France’s mainstream political parties were Monday scratching their heads over what to do about a surge by the Front National (FN) after a breakthrough by-election win for the far-right party.
The ruling Socialist party and the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, face humiliating reverses in municipal and European elections next year if the FN can sustain its current standing in the eyes of an electorate thoroughly fed-up with record unemployment, rising taxes and a perceived increase in crime and insecurity.
A poll published last week suggested the FN could emerge as the best-supported party in the European elections with 24 percent of those asked declaring themselves ready to back the party led by Marine Le Pen, the daughter of FN founder Jean-Marie Le Pen.
That shock survey was followed on Sunday by a spectacular victory for the FN in a local by-election in Brignoles, where FN candidate Laurent Lopez claimed 53.9 percent of the vote in a run-off against the UMP candidate.
“The left and the mainstream right are blaming each other for what is happening, but the reality is they’ve both been knocked sideways,” said Nonna Mayer, the Research Director at the National Research Centre CNRS. “Neither of them know what to do.”
There were particular, local factors in Brignoles which influenced the outcome of a vote being held for the third time, the result having been judged too close to stand on two previous occasions, when the run-off was between the FN and the Communist Party.
The southeastern town has struggled with high unemployment since the closure of local aluminium mines in the 1990s and the gloomy economic backdrop has exacerbated tensions between established residents and a large community of North African immigrants, creating fertile ground for the FN in a region where it traditionally does better than elsewhere in France.
But the scale of the victory for Lopez was nevertheless widely interpreted as an indicator of how the FN is capitalising on current voter concerns to appeal to a broader slice of the electorate than ever before.
A smartly-dressed former businessman, Lopez, 48, is the perfect embodiment of the more voter-friendly image that the FN has projected since Marine Le Pen took over from her controversial father at the head of the party in 2011.
Harder to treat as a pariah party
The pledges to end net immigration, most controversially by ripping up family reunion rules, and to begin moves to pull France out of the European Union, remain in place.
But the FN is now far from being a one-issue party, notably making its voice heard on education to the extent that it has recently been able to announce the creation of a network of supporters amongst teachers – an unthinkable development a decade ago.
Marine Le Pen, has worked hard to dispel the image of the party as fundamentally racist.
She has expelled activists who make bigoted public statements and the FN lists in next year’s municipal elections will include a handful of ethnic minority candidates.
All of which is making it harder for the mainstream parties to prevent the FN from winning more than a handful of elected posts by treating it as a pariah party and urging their voters to cast their ballots tactically to keep them out of power, an approach referred to as the “Republican Front”.
“I think we can safely say the Republican Front is now dead,” Marine Le Pen declared after Sunday’s triumph in Brignoles, and her opponents acknowledged that she was probably right.
“It just doesn’t work, voters don’t like being told who to vote for,” said Thierry Mandon, the spokesman for the Socialists’ parliamentary party.
Despite the current disarray of the mainstream parties, the CNRS’s Mayer still believes the recent upturn in the fortunes of the FN remains primarily a protest phenomenon.
“The change of leadership has given the party a slightly slicker image, but for most French people, it remains an extreme right party founded on racist ideas which is incapable of governing,” Mayer told AFP.
“Marine Le Pen does have a better image than her father. Unlike him she is not associated with the legacy of the second world war and anti-semitism.
“Local factors played heavily in their favour in Brignoles. On a national level there is enormous disappointment after a year of the Socialists back in power, and the issues of crime and insecurity are beginning to weigh heavily in the national debate, which plays in the FN’s favour.
“But don’t forget that, in the municipals, the FN will have candidates in one town in six at most. It is not as strong as it pretends to be.”
Merci, avec~~
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~~Κύριε ἐλέησον~~
Rejoice and Glad!!
Amen~~
EX LIBRIS
~~THEOS EK MĒCHANĒS~~
JOHN DANIEL BEGG
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"Jean-Marie Le Pen is a friend. He is dangerous for the political set because he's the only one who's sincere. He says out loud what many people think deep down, and what the politicians refrain from saying because they are either too demagogic or too chicken. Le Pen, with all his faults and qualities, is probably the only one who thinks about the interests of France before his own."~~French actor Alain Delon
Website: https://johndanielbegg.wordpress.com
NATIONALISM APPROACHES ON LITTLE CAT’S FEET~The Battle of France has only just begun~nothing will ever be the same again~the decayed conservative and liberal parties of the west have failed the people and are in terminus~Globalization is in terminus~
Following Sunday’s result, the FN issued a celebratory statement: “The FN has proved that it can rally its countrymen around its candidate, and that the mainstream parties have been completely shunned and defied by voters.”
NATIONALISM APPROACHES ON LITTLE CAT’S FEET~The Battle of France has only just begun~nothing will ever be the same again~the decayed conservative and liberal parties of the west have failed the people and are in terminus~Globalization is in terminus~
“Jean-Marie Le Pen is a friend. He is dangerous for the political set because he’s the only one who’s sincere. He says out loud what many people think deep down, and what the politicians refrain from saying because they are either too demagogic or too chicken. Le Pen, with all his faults and qualities, is probably the only one who thinks about the interests of France before his own.”~~French actor Alain Delon
JOHN DANIEL BEGG 