Buoyed by record polls, Jordan Bardella, head of the RN list for the Europeans, chose May 1, a favorite date for Lepénists, to present his first 34 running mates during a meeting Wednesday afternoon in Perpignan.
Will they all sit in the Strasbourg hemicycle? At the National Rally, all hopes are allowed, as voting intentions do not seem to face any ceiling: almost a third of those questioned by Ipsos intend to vote on June 9 for the flame party, 15 points ahead of the Macronist list, according to a study published Monday.
In the capital of the Pyrénées-Orientales, whose town hall was delighted by the figure of the National Rally Louis Aliot four years ago, the Lepénists intend to launch the countdown to an announced victory, presented as the stepping stone to a fourth candidacy from Marine Le Pen for the Elysée in three years.
On stage, the boss of the RN group in the National Assembly will speak before the one who succeeded her at the head of the party a year and a half ago.
The two leaders must above all present the first 35 candidates on the list – Marine Le Pen will symbolically occupy the 80th and penultimate place -, after having drawn up several war prizes in recent weeks, sometimes at the cost of controversies.
Malika Sorel, an essayist formerly close to François Fillon propelled to number two on the list, notably hit the headlines by admitting to having made offers of service to Emmanuel Macron at the start of the year.
Last week, she once again made some party leaders sigh by asserting on Europe 1 that “the civil war (had) already begun quietly”, going against the Lepenist doxa.
The number three of the team, Fabrice Leggeri, was the subject of a complaint filed by two NGOs, including the Human Rights League, who accuse him of having facilitated illegal pushbacks of migrant boats at sea when he was boss of the European border guard agency Frontex.
As for the presence on the list of Mahorais Saidali Boina Hamissi, announced by Marine Le Pen from Mamoudzou, it finally had to be denied after several racist and conspiratorial publications published on social networks were spotted by Libération.
– “Oiled wrestler” –
“All that changes nothing,” says a close friend of Jordan Bardella, who now dreams of gathering twice as many votes as Valérie Hayer, the head of the Macronist list… even Raphaël Glucksmann, the PS candidate that many Lepénist strategists imagine climbing to second place on the podium.
Unbeatable, Bardella? The one to whom Marine Le Pen promised Matignon in the event of victory in the presidential election has in any case authorized himself to skip all the televised debates until then, to the great displeasure of the other heads of the lists.
Last week, during what was presented as a “press conference”, he again allowed himself to snub journalists’ questions.
The “strategy of the oiled wrestler” – or “dodging”, his opponents rail – nevertheless has its limits. On Thursday, Jordan Bardella will give the answer to Valérie Hayer on BFMTV, before a confrontation of all the heads of the list, including him, on Sunday on RTL.
The Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, has also finally accepted his debate proposal launched several weeks ago, a new opportunity for the macronie to try to “flush out” the “emptiness” of the RN candidate.
“Bardella adds the fact of having nothing to say and the physical attitude of someone who has already won,” annoys a former minister.
Is an accident still possible? “The problem now is that if we do less than 30%, it will almost be seen as a poor performance,” worries someone close to Bardella, still burned by the 2021 regionals.
The party then defied all the polls by failing to win any region, mainly due to high abstention.
After Perpignan, by June 9, the far-right party intends to invest its strongholds to mobilize its electorate, with meetings planned in Moselle, in Var and in Marine Le Pen’s stronghold, Hénin-Beaumont (Pas). -de-Calais).
