The French far-right leaves the party’s presidency to MEP Bardella and embarks on a four-year career aiming to beat Macron by 2027
MEP Jordan Bardella was elected this Sunday in Paris as the new chairman of National Regrouping, the main formation of the French far right, winning 84.84% of the vote of the militants. He triumphed over Louis Aliot, mayor of Perpignan, who received 15.16% support. Bardella, 27, replaces Marine Le Pen, who is leaving the party’s organic structure to refocus on the fight for the French presidency.
«It is with a certain emotion that I leave the presidency of the National Regrouping. Congratulations to our new leader, Jordan Bardella, to whom I hand over the torch today,” Le Pen wrote on Twitter. “I am not leaving the presidency of our movement to go on vacation. I am still mobilized,” added the far-right leader to the 18th Congress, which was held at the Maison de la Mutualité in Paris.
Le Pen, chairman of the party between 2011 and 2022, remains deputy and chairman of the National Regrouping Group (89 deputies) in the National Assembly. In her ten years at the head of the far-right formation, she has managed to ‘de-diabolize’ it to make it more presentable to the electorate, but she has failed to win the presidential election on any of the three occasions. for which she was a candidate for the Elysée Palace. Bardella paid tribute to Le Pen. “I owe everything I am to Marine. She made me discover politics,” said the far-right MEP.
With Bardella at the helm of the party, Le Pen can now focus on the National Assembly and on the future 2027 presidential campaign. “We are going to succeed Emmanuel Macron,” the MEP promised.
His election as president of the National Regrouping marks a revolution within the party that was founded in 1972 under the name Front National by Jean-Marie Le Pen, a historical figure of the far-right Frans and father of Marine Le Pen. There has often been criticism that the Le Pen family ran the training as if it were a family business.
Bardella is not Le Pen, but he is very close to the clan. His partner is Nolwenn Olivier, niece of Marine Le Pen and daughter of Philippe Olivier and Marie-Caroline Le Pen. Louis Aliot, Bardella’s opponent, also had ties to the Le Pen. The mayor of Perpignan was Marine’s partner for ten years.
The fact that the National Regrouping chairman does not go by the surname Le Pen is “a test of maturity”, explains MEP Philippe Olivier, Marine’s special adviser. Olivier does not believe that the replacement at the head of the party will mean an ideological change, although there may be “some method”. Marine Le Pen, his sister-in-law, remains “the moral authority of the in-laws,” says Olivier. “Bravo to Jordan,” Jean-Marie Le Pen tweeted, blessing his choice.
In his speech, Bardella alluded to the racist incident in the National Assembly that tainted change at the top. The president of the National Realignment denounced a “manhunt” for far-right deputy Grégoire de Fournas, sanctioned by the National Assembly for telling a black deputy to return to Africa.
Jordan Bardella has had a meteoric rise in the National Rally despite having no college degrees. This young politician is very ambitious, but loyal to Marine Le Pen.
At the age of 16, Bardella, of Italian descent, joined the National Front and entered his youth. At the age of 19 he was department secretary of the Front National in Seine-Saint Denis and in 2015 he held the position of parliamentary assistant to far-right MEP Jean-François Jalkh, a denier of the use of Zyklon B gas in Nazi Germany. -extermination camps.
At the age of 20, Bardella, raised in the Parisian suburbs, launched the collective Banlieues patriotes (Patriots Periphery) with the aim of convincing the inhabitants of the most deprived neighborhoods to vote for Marine Le Pen. Bardella was part of his mentor’s 2017 presidential campaign. In September of that year he was appointed spokesman for the National Front and a year later he was elected national director of the party’s youth (FNJ).
Wanting to renew the party’s image and give it a fresher, more modern look, Marine Le Pen saw the potential of Bardella, young, attractive, media-oriented, a good speaker and with a good presence. In June 2019, he was appointed Vice-President of the National Realignment and a month later, at the age of 23, he was elected a Member of the European Parliament. In September 2021, he was appointed interim chairman of the party so that Le Pen could focus on the campaign for the April 2022 presidential election.
Source: La Verdad
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