In French Elections, All Eyes Are on the Right

Savoring the second, Le Pen declared to her supporters, “the National Front is now, without doubt, the 1st party of France”.

“I think the French want to try out the National Front”, Le Pen declared this week, adding that if elected she would run her region “until I am elected president of the republic”. The same was true for Le Pen’s niece, Marion Marechal Le Pen, who had an identical showing within the southern Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur, a stronghold of the normal right.

The Front National topped regional elections held over the weekend, and although they should be kept out of power in most of the country due to the second round of elections, the FN has never controlled any regions at all before.

PARIS – The head of France’s far-right National Front has vowed to bring suit against the government over the situation in Calais, where thousands of migrants are camped in hopes of reaching Britain.

With only two days left to the final round of the elections, latest opinion polls point to a very tight race.

The party’s main target is immigrants, and what Le Pen sees as a threat to France from Islam.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls, a Socialist campaigning for weeks against the National Front, played the ultimate fear card Friday, saying on France-Inter radio that “the extreme right advocates division… that could lead to civil war”.

Marine Le Pen quickly lashed out at Mr Valls in response to his attack on the party set up by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. The National Front came in lower than one proportion point ahead of the center-right Republicains of former President Nicolas Sarkozy & just 4 points ahead of President Francois Hollande’s governing Socialists.Le Pen’s party bash may find it troublesome to sustain its electoral gains within the decisive 2nd spherical after the Socialist Party bash withdrew its candidates for some regional councils in order in that its supporters might cast ballots for the Republicains and stop a National Front victory. Such an outcome would be a setback for the FN and for Le Pen’s planned campaign for the French presidency in 2017.

“The more we use this approach… the more we will undermine trust in democracy and increase the FN’s score”, said political analyst Joel Gombin. Muslims can be French citizens “only on condition that they bend to the customs and the way of life that Greek, Roman and 16 centuries of Christianity fashioned”.

The French model “has been abandoned in favor of the multicultural ideal, a kind of right to be different that I profoundly believe contributes to the French fracture”, she said.

“She has proved she can convince…”

The Front National is one of the hard-right, anti-immigration and eurosceptic forces that has become considerably more popular in Europe over the last few years.