National Front members adore Marechal-Le Pen, voting her to the top in committee elections annually ago over party colossi that contained Marine Le Pen’s company, Louis Alliot, as well as the National Front’s No. 2, Florian Philippot – both additionally running in Sunday’s regional vote.
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Le Pen’s 115 page-long program for the Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie region says French secularism would be “strictly implemented”. Marechal-Le Pen, running in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region, would take 46 percent of the vote, according to the poll, while her conservative rival Christian Estrosi would get 54 percent.
French voters go to the polls on Sunday in regional elections that will show whether the far-right National Front can turn popularity into power.
Savoring the moment, Le Pen declared to her supporters: “The National Front is now, without doubt, the first party of France”.
Le Pen has reaped the rewards of her efforts to “de-demonise” the party bequeathed by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, but it retains a stridently anti-immigrant and often Islamophobic message that she has amplified since last month’s carnage in Paris.
Le Pen softened her usually trenchant stance in a reach-out to left and right, saying her party represents a new way where “patriots” respect the interests of the regions and clans and “political fraud” have no place. Le Pen is in the race for the presidency of the French northern region.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls, a Socialist campaigning for weeks against the National Front, played the ultimate fear card Friday, saying on France-Inter radio that “the extreme right advocates division… that could lead to civil war”.
When the ballots were counted after the first round last weekend, the party was ahead of its mainstream rivals in six of 13 mainland France regions, with almost 28 percent of the national vote. Despite her Parisian upbringing, she connects with a region of small businesses and farmers deeply attached to tradition and the land, from France’s southern Alps to its vineyards and fields of lavender. Le Pen and her niece have said that they would refuse funding to interests representing a single community, a reference to Muslim groups.
A combative Ms Le Pen has slammed such tactics as “undemocratic” and accused her opponents of “intellectual terrorism” in seeking to block her party’s path to power.
“Seriously, have you ever heard me say something like that?” she asked on Thursday when questioned about Mr. Trump’s comments during a television interview.
“We are supporters of… republican assimilation that makes of the French of all origins members of one community, the national community”, she said. “She has the capacity to deliver”, Marc Lecointe, a 40-year-old finance professional, said at a Paris rally Thursday that brought together all 13 National Front candidates.
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“She has something hereditary, a political sense”, Lecointe said.
