A historic change of leadership for the Rassemblement national, the former Front National, the party of the French radical right that for over 40 years has always been led by one and one Le Pen. The new president, who succeeds Marine, is Jordan Bardella, elected after eleven years of presidency of the former candidate for the Elysée.
Bardella, who becomes the third president of the far-right party in fifty years of life and the first not to bear the surname Le Pen, won with almost 85% of the votes against Louis Aliot, mayor of Perpignan.
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by our correspondent Anais Ginori
Racism in Parliament
The MEP is an enfant prodige of French politics, at just 27 years old he has already been Le Pen’s favorite for some time, and takes over a party in great embarrassment due to the exclusion two days ago of the deputy Grégoire de Fournas, who during a debate in Parliament addressed a black colleague shouting “go back to Africa”. The offended deputy is left-wing parliamentarian Carlos Martens Bilongo, who spoke on the “tragedy of illegal immigration”.
The episode is a big stumbling block in the so-called “dediabolisation” process of the “de-demonization” initiated by candidate Le Pen to try to accredit the Rassemblement national as a right-wing but republican formation, after 40 years in which the Front National, heir of the fascist right, he was kept out of government by republican political forces.
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Jordan Bardella can still boast a strong legitimacy within the party. If he were to honor his promise to name his opponent, Louis Aliot, vice president of the party, he will have no difficulty in building a strong team without worrying about the balance between the different souls. In any case, Marine Le Pen intends to remain at the center of power by leading a group of 89 deputies, a much more powerful machine than the party structure alone.
Loyalty to Marine
Bardella continually underlines his “singular relationship of inestimable trust” with Marine Le Pen, to whom he regularly swears allegiance and loyalty, and to whom he owes a meteoric political rise which began in 2019. Originally from Seine-Saint-Denis, Bardella is asserted during the presidential campaign through televised debates in which his ease and skill sometimes put the most paludic opponents in difficulty.
His detractors deny him an excessive indulgence towards party members too close to Eric Zemmour. Despite the supposedly immense political ambitions, he has vowed to be the first supporter of a fourth Marine Le Pen nomination for the presidency in 2027.