Europe 1 with AFP
modified to
6:09 p.m., November 05, 2022
Jordan Bardella was elected number one of the National Rally on Saturday, ending eleven years of presidency of Marine Le Pen whose Elysian ambitions remain intact, an advent disrupted by the scandal of the deputy excluded from the Assembly after making remarks deemed racist . Jordan Bardella, who becomes the third president of the far-right party in fifty years of existence and the first not to bear the surname Le Pen, won with nearly 85% of the vote against Louis Aliot, mayor of Perpignan .
The 27-year-old MEP is due to deliver a speech at the end of the afternoon, at the end of a party congress in Paris, during which the embarrassment remained palpable the day after the exclusion for 15 days of the deputy RN Grégoire de Fournas, an extremely rare decision. The elected representative of Gironde aroused a lively controversy after having launched Thursday in the hemicyle “that he returns to Africa” during an intervention by the elected LFI Carlos Martens Bilongo, who spoke on the “drama of the ‘illegal immigration”.
A score beyond expectations
By targeting “the camp of good”, Marine Le Pen seemed to refer to it during a farewell speech to the presidency, pointing to “lie”, “disloyalty”, “maneuver”, “shame”. “Adversity is more about facing it and fighting it than commenting on it and suffering it,” she urged. The episode has in any case undermined the desire for “de-demonization” initiated by the unsuccessful presidential candidate, a strategy that her successor at the head of the party has indicated that she wants to pursue.
Jordan Bardella can in any case claim strong internal legitimacy, with a score beyond his expectations – he aimed at best to collect three quarters of the votes, while just under 30,000 members took part in the vote. If he should honor his promise to appoint his opponent, Louis Aliot, vice-president of the party, he will have no difficulty in constituting an executive team at his service, without worrying about the balance of sensitivities. But, any president he becomes, Mr. Bardella will have to find his place, as Marine Le Pen intends to remain at the heart of power by leading a group of 89 deputies, a machine much more powerful than the partisan structure alone.
However, the party has often reserved a cruel fate for its number two – “the dolphin’s destiny is sometimes to run aground”, had summed up Jean-Marie Le Pen in his time.
“Singular Relationship”
Jordan Bardella prefers to praise his “singular relationship of invaluable trust” with Marine Le Pen, to whom he regularly swears fidelity and loyalty, and to whom he owes a meteoric rise started in 2019 – he had taken the head of the RN list at the Europeans – before winning the interim presidency of the party last year. Originally from Seine-Saint-Denis, the one who celebrated his 27th birthday in mid-September was mainly revealed during the presidential campaign through televised debates where his ease and skill sometimes put seasoned opponents in difficulty.
Presented by certain executives as “the creature” of the boss of the French extreme right, her political friendships as well as her line are however questioned by some of her detractors, who highlight her acquaintances with “identitarians” or too great a leniency towards those who had gone to Eric Zemmour.
In mid-October, his eagerness to participate in a demonstration initiated by Reconquête! after the murder of the young Lola in Paris – he renounced it in extremis – accentuated the disorder as for his flair or his real convictions. Despite reputedly immense ambitions, he swore that he intended to be the first supporter of a fourth candidacy of Marine Le Pen for the presidency of 2027. Freed from sometimes thankless internal tasks, the deputy of Pas-de-Calais has since consolidated Palais Bourbon more than ever its political and media base.