French National Front founder Le Pen to fight exclusion from party

“She didn’t want to be involved directly because she would look like a villain”. The move was its latest attempt to sideline him and bolster his daughter Marine Le Pen’s election prospects in the 2017 presidential election. “It’s dirty to kill your own daddy, so she didn’t kill daddy directly, she did it through her henchman”.

“Jean-Marie Le Pen kicked off a process of which he knew the outcome by multiplying mistakes over many weeks, which could only lead to this kind of decision”, Marine said in a statement after the decision was announced.

“It’s a logical conclusion of a very hard and violent conflict between the daughter and the father”, Nonna Mayer, a political analyst, told RFI.

France’s far-Right master provocateur, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has accused his daughter Marine of resorting to “dirty tactics” to engineer his expulsion from the Front National.

Under his daughter’s leadership, the National Front has broken into the political mainstream. “Later I realised that there was no vote by the committee, which was waiting for orders from Marine Le Pen“. But he always comes back, sometimes taking them to court and winning.

Mr Le Pen said his appearance before a party committee that voted to exclude him had been a “masquerade”, remote-controlled by his daughter, who stayed away from the hearing to ensure “total impartiality”. “This movement is heavily endebted to everything he did for the past decade”.

The 87-year-old politician was thrown out of the party after a three-hour internal disciplinary hearing by the National Front’s executive bureau.

“I haven’t received notification of the decision yet”.

Gollnisch added that he still hoped justice would prevail in this case, as it did in the past.

“Honestly, no one is saying “this is extraordinary”, said Antoine Mellies, president of Audace, a group of mainly young entrepreneurs and activists who support Marine Le Pen. We want to be in the field to prepare the upcoming regional elections, which look quite good for the party.

“She was in command of the firing squad over the telephone”, he said.

As he stepped out of the auto on Thursday, Jean-Marie Le Pen muttered that “only foot soldiers” would be present at the meeting.

He named his daughter as his successor in 2010, and she has since chalked up electoral victories for the National Front, with polls suggesting she could become a leading contender in the French presidential race in 2017 – her ultimate goal.

On Thursday, Bruno Gollnisch, an old ally of Jean-Marie Le Pen, stood outside the party headquarters and angrily told journalists that he saw nothing in Jean-Marie Le Pen’s recent statements that was incompatible with the National Front.