Marine Le Pen promises revolution for France

Far-Right leader Marine Le Penpromised a revolution for France as she officially launched her presidential campaign on Sunday, declaring that the same nationalist forces that propelled Donald Trump to power in the US will take her to victory.

کد خبر: ۶۶۴۱۴۱

تاریخ: ۱۸ بهمن ۱۳۹۵ - ۰۹:۴۷

"The wind of history has turned, it will carry us to the summit," she told a cheering crowd of around 3,000 people in Lyon, where a day earlier the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron, who leads the race in the opinion polls, also promised to overthrow the established order.

The words "National Front” - the name of the party founded by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen - and the family name were nowhere to be seen as the 48-year-old lawyer took to a stage emblazoned with the words "Au nom du peuple” (In the name of the people).

"What is at stake in this election ... is whether France can still be a free nation," Ms Le Pen told the flag-waving supporters at the rally in a congress centre. "The divide is no longer between the left and right but between patriots and globalists!"

Her event came just after Jean-Luc Melenchon, the far-Left firebrand who is neck and neck with the ruling Socialist party candidate Benoit Hamon, rallied his supporters a few miles away in another part of Lyon - and appeared as a hologram at another meeting in Paris.

Most polls predict Ms Le Pen will win the first round of the election but will be beaten by Mr Macron - who has edged ahead of Francois Fillon after a corruption scandal centring on the conservative candidate’s British wife Penelope - in the final round on May 7.

But this is the most unpredictable French election in decades and the far-Right leader and her supporters believe that all bets are off after the Brexit and Trump votes.

These show that it is not only "possible that presidents like Donald Trump can be elected … but that they can above all respect their promises,” declared Ms Le Pen, whose dark trouser suit contrasted with the marine blue backdrop of the stage at the congress centre.

She promised a "revolution", based on "patriotism, proximity, liberty."

In 144 manifesto "commitments" published on Saturday, she proposes leaving the eurozone, holding a referendum on EU membership, slapping taxes on imports and on the job contracts of foreigners, lowering the retirement age and increasing several welfare benefits while lowering income tax.

Ms Le Pen has sought to make the Front National more mainstream - hence the removal of both the party name and her surname in election posters and rallies - but her speech in Lyon showed that anti-immigrant rhetoric is still central.

The loudest applause came - along with chants of  "On est chez nous!" ("This is our country") - when she railed against foreigners committing crimes in France or said that no illegal immigrant would be granted residency or get free healthcare if she came to power.

It was exactly that message that 68-year-old pensioner Guy Ughetto had travelled 150 miles from the southern city of Avignon to hear.

"There has been an invasion of north Africans and Africans, an invasion that has been tolerated by successive (French) governments,” he said as he queued to get into the rally in the congress centre on the banks of the river Rhone.

He said that Donald Trump had "made his country respected again” and that he would like France to impose a similar ban to that in the US ordered by its new president on people from Muslim countries.

Ms Le Pen got another standing ovation when she claimed that "financial globalisation and Islamist globalisation” were linked and were "two ideologies that want to bring France to its knees."

She took a swipe at her election rivals, saying that while she stood for "the France of the people,” they stood for ”the moneyed right, the moneyed left.”

That was a thinly veiled reference to the fact that Mr Macron was a high-flying investment banker before becoming economy minister under President Francois Hollande and then resigning last year to launch his political movement.

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And it was a dig at Mr Fillon, who lives in a 12th-century chateau and who campaigned on a platform of probity and high ethics until late last month when allegations emerged that his Welsh-born wife Penelope had been paid more than €800,000 for a "fictitious job" as his parliamentary aide.

Mr Fillon denies any wrongdoing but is under investigation by financial prosecutors and faces mounting pressure to drop his bid for the French presidency.

Polls show that a large majority of French do not believe he is innocent, and a growing number of his Les Republicains party comrades are calling on him to stand aside and let someone else, possibly Alain Juppé, become their candidate.