[Fascist] French National Front MP Marion Marechal-Le Pen.
Picture: AP
...the ugliest face of French politics, the far Right is counting on an angelic-looking law student to help broaden its appeal among an electorate disenchanted with mainstream parties.At 22, Marion Marechal-Le Pen is the youngest MP in modern French history...
...Her 84-year-old grandfather, founder of the [fascist] National Front, was a former paratrooper notorious for his anti-Semitic gibes that resulted in a conviction for Holocaust denial. He handed the party reins to his daughter, [Marine] 44, last year... Despite [Marine]winning 18 per cent in the presidential election this year, she failed to secure a parliamentary seat in the June elections and her niece [Marion], one of only two of the Front's candidates to be elected, became the latest star of a dynasty that has dominated France's far Right for decades.
Marechal-Le Pen, who is doing a law degree while learning the ropes as an MP, says she felt apprehensive at first about entering a parliament so hostile to her party.
The Front has not had seats in parliament since the late 1980s.
....Jean-Francois Cope, leader of the centre-right party, ...refused to shake her hand....
..."One big problem is this law allowing illegal immigrants to have their medical care reimbursed 100 per cent, a measure that costs us E600 million a year," she says. ...She believes her aunt's presidential run helped to focus voters' attention on immigration-related issues. "Now everyone is talking about them. So even if we don't have a lot of MPs, we have a central position on the French political chessboard."
She continues: "...I've had bags and bags of mail from people congratulating me on my victory. I feel a lot of support."
Young people, in particular, had voted "massively" for her and the "renewal" she represents.
Although she insists she is not taking orders from her elders, she can hardly avoid other Le Pens.
"We see each other every day," she says, referring to the hilltop mansion that she shares with her mother, two brothers, her aunt, her grandfather and Pierrette, his first wife, who once posed as a "French maid" in Playboy....
No comments:
Post a Comment