By JADE LE DELEY, Associated Press
PARIS (AP) — An ambitious 27-year-old is vying against a longtime heavyweight in France’s major far-right party to switch Marine Le Pen as leader of the resurgent National Rally in a contest culminating Saturday at a celebration congress.
The congress comes because the anti-immigration party is looking for to capitalize on a breakthrough showing in legislative elections this 12 months. It is also facing broad public anger over a racist comment this week by a National Rally member in parliament that solid doubt on years of efforts to melt the party’s image.
Jordan Bardella, the younger candidate and an outspoken member of the European Parliament, is widely tipped to win and turn into the primary person to steer the party who doesn’t have the Le Pen name since its creation a half-century ago.
Marine Le Pen has said she desires to concentrate on leading the party’s 89 lawmakers within the National Assembly and remains to be expected to wield significant power in party leadership.
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Bardella has been the interim president of the National Rally since Le Pen entered the presidential race last 12 months. His opponent Louis Aliot, 53, is the mayor of Perpignan and has been a senior official of the National Rally for 20 years. He has been a fervent supporter of Le Pen’s rise and is a former romantic partner of hers.
Le Pen lost to Emmanuel Macron on her third bid for the presidency this 12 months, but won 44% of the vote, her highest rating yet. Two months later, her party won its most seats thus far within the lower house of parliament. It has welcomed rising support for far-right parties elsewhere in Europe, and notably in neighboring Italy.
Le Pen has gone to great lengths to remove the stigma of racism and antisemitism that clung to the far-right party, to melt its image and to broaden her audience. She has notably distanced herself from her now ostracized father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who co-founded the party then called the National Front.
“Bardella is an element of a generation of young, very young, individuals who engaged themselves behind Marine Le Pen within the 2010s and who probably wouldn’t have joined the National Rally during Jean-Marie Le Pen’s era,” political scientist Jean-Yves Camus told The Associated Press.
Bardella supports the anti-immigration and protectionist line of the party.
“Progress today known as localism. It’s called defending borders. It’s called protectionism,” he told the AP in 2019, ahead of European elections, rejecting what he called “massive immigration.”
Then again, Aliot, the present vp of the party, argued that the National Rally must reshape itself to make it more palatable to the mainstream right.
In response to Camus, the party vote won’t query Le Pen’s leadership.
“The primary impact of this election is that Le Pen won’t need to take care of the party and may concentrate on an important thing, leading the party’s lawmakers within the National Assembly,” he explained.
For the past few months, 40.000 members of the party have been voting online to elect the brand new head of the party. The outcomes might be announced Saturday throughout the congress.
Elaine Ganley contributed to this report.
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