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Marine Le Pen
Photo: IAN LANGSDON / EPA
Nothing will come of the jubilee: At the party convention of her Rassemblement National (RN) in Perpignan in the south of France, the chairwoman Marine Le Pen actually wanted to enjoy her victory in the regional elections to declare war on President Emmanuel Macron.
But then everything turned out differently.
Because in the vote, Marine Le Pen was the big loser.
The RN was unable to win a single region and, compared to the last elections in 2015, also lost around 30 percent of its voters.
That is why the 52-year-old is now under massive pressure.
"If we had won in one region, it would be easier," admitted her advisor Philippe Olivier. As a result of the election debacle, Le Pen's course of "normalization" and "defoliation" is now in question. The trained lawyer had signed him up for the former Front National (FN) when she replaced her father Jean-Marie Le Pen at the top of the party a good ten years ago.
Not all followers like Marine Le Pen's cuddle course with the bourgeois camp and her attempt to make her father's legacy partially forgotten. Since the second regional election round on Sunday, resignations and calls for a course correction have caused unrest. Long-time party member Bruno Gollnisch denounced an "erosion" of the "affection" of many supporters and called for clarification. MEP Gilbert Collard called the "devastation a trap" and spoke of a "crisis of confidence" for Le Pen. Such open criticism is unusual in the tightly organized National Collection Movement.
For Jean-Marie Le Pen, the anger at his eldest daughter Marine is a satisfaction: after the regional elections, the 93-year-old party founder etched that the right-wing extremist party under him would have to regain its "masculinity" if it did not want to disappear into oblivion.
He told his daughter, who had pushed him out of the party in the dispute over the course in 2015, that she only had “chances of success if she offered an alternative to the system”.
Some see Marine Le Pen before a palace revolution.
Because in the far-right camp, a powerful competitor is warming up: the journalist and author Eric Zemmour, a controversial columnist for the conservative newspaper »Le Figaro«.
Zemmour has in common with Le Pen Senior that he has been convicted several times in court for provocative and anti-Islamic theses.
Zemmour even dared to break taboos and accused Marine Le Pen of speaking "like Emmanuel Macron".
Quite a few now expect the 62-year-old to run for the presidential election in spring 2022. In this case, Le Pen could threaten a split in their camp, which continues to include identitary and right-wing extremist groups.
But it is not that far yet, believes French right-wing extremism researcher Jean-Yves Camus.
He expects Le Pen to be confirmed at the party leadership at the party congress.
There are no opposing candidates for the presidency anyway, stressed Camus.
And in the Rassemblement National, in his opinion, there is currently no one who could successfully revolt against the Le Pen heiress.
as / AFP
