Jean-Marie Le Pen, who co-founded France’s far-right Nationwide Entrance, has been excluded from the social gathering following a disciplinary listening to.
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“Jean-Marie Le Pen kicked off a process of which he knew the outcome by multiplying mistakes over many weeks, which could only lead to this kind of decision”, Marine said in a statement after the decision was announced.
Bruno Gollnisch, a member of the party’s old guard also present at the hearing, said earlier it “would be stupefying” if Jean-Marie Le Pen was excluded from the National Front.
Le Pen can still count on support from a die-hard rump within the party, and the man who became an orphan in his teens and survived the brutal wars of Indochina and Algeria is a born fighter.
While keeping a strong anti-immigrant stance, she has openly avoided some of the anti-semitism speech that was found inside the party in the past, even threatening for instance to sue any journalists or political leader that would brand her party “extreme-right”.
Commentators suggested Le Pen father was useful for the daughter’s strategy of “de-evil-ization” of the racist party, in a bid to win the centrist vote.
The move was its latest attempt to sideline him and bolster his daughter Marine Le Pen’s election prospects in the 2017 presidential election.
His lawyer, Frederic Joachim referred to as the choice a “political assassination”.
However, the normally feisty Le Pen left the meeting with a conciliatory tone, offering an outstretched hand in search of a “signal of pacification”.
The choice was introduced in a press release hours after the top of a three-hour listening to by the social gathering’s government bureau, throughout which the 87-year-old Le Pen defended himself towards an inventory of 15 complaints.
“The members of the executive bureau owe their mandates as members of parliament or European Parliament, in large part, to the action of Jean-Marie Le Pen over decades”, he told Europe 1 radio.
Len Pen has now reportedly demanded that the hearing for his expulsion take place in public.
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Le Pen is accused of bringing the party into disrepute with his extreme views, including his recent comments that Nazi gas chambers were a mere “detail” of history. He said he will attend a September gathering of the party, and “I’ll be there, obviously in my place as honorary president”.
