The RN would have done without it just before the legislative elections: the slippage of the deputy Roger Chudeau on the former minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem undermines the strategy of demonization of the party, even if so far nothing seems to prevent its progress in polls.
The impossible normalization? During this lightning campaign, the Le Pen party must already face repeated controversies over the sulphurous past of some of its candidates on social networks, “racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic” remarks, denounced by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.
This time, it is an outgoing MP – who members of the RN presented as a potential Minister of National Education – who is plunging his camp into turmoil.
On BFMTV, Roger Chudeau attacked the former socialist minister of National Education, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. The appointment of this “Franco-Moroccan” was an “error” and “not a good thing for the Republic”, he said.
More broadly, this candidate for re-election in Loir-et-Cher thinks “that ministerial positions must be held by Franco-French people”, to avoid a “problem of dual loyalty”.
Friday morning, Mr. Chudeau canceled an interview on Sud Radio, according to the station, and it was party executives who came to distance themselves, including Marine Le Pen herself.
Roger Chudeau has a “personal” opinion, “totally contrary in reality to the project of the National Rally”, tackled the three-time presidential candidate on CNews.
“We cannot” withdraw his investiture two days before the first round, but “I think that the party president will not leave things as they are,” she assured, while the RN is already facing a controversy over its proposal to exclude dual nationals from “extremely sensitive” positions in the State: nuclear, defense, intelligence, etc.
The general abolition of dual nationality figured more broadly in Marine Le Pen’s platform in 2017, before she removed it in the run-up to the next election. “I realized that dual nationals felt” this “as a form of suspicion” and “I found it deeply unfair,” she assured on Friday.
– “Dual allegiance” –
The “dual allegiance” trial of dual nationals has regularly been agitated on the far right, notably among Jean-Marie Le Pen, who in 1989 questioned Secretary of State Lionel Stoléru, of Jewish faith, about a supposed “dual nationality”. ” which he didn’t have.
Since Mr. Chudeau’s remarks, the controversy has continued to swell. Ironically, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem “thanked” Mr. Chudeau for “this fine preview of what the RN would give in power: incompetence, racism and lies.”
The party is showing its “true face”, that of “uninhibited racism”, reacted the president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet (Renaissance).
“We must be outraged by these things,” stressed the head of state, Emmanuel Macron, from Brussels.
“The President of the Republic and others are making a big deal out of it” and “using it” in an “electoral” way, responded RN MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy on BFMTV, while regretting the “unfounded” remarks of Roger Chudeau which “only commit him”.
More broadly, the presidential camp has listed in an interactive “map of shame” the controversial remarks of more than a hundred RN candidates in the legislative elections of June 30 and July 7.
Invested in Côtes-d’Armor, Françoise Billaud had relayed on Facebook an image suggesting supporting “heterosexuality while it is still legal”. In July 2021, she had shared a publication from an Internet user showing Pétain’s grave, with the caption “July 23, 1951, death in detention of Philippe Pétain, Marshal of France”, as noted by the daily newspaper Libération. Her account has been deleted for a few days.
In Côte-d’Or, René Lioret castigated “African scum” on social networks. In Paris, Agnès Pageard relayed a message on social networks which denounced “the degree of connivance at the top of the State” of several Jewish personalities.
These controversies have so far not slowed down the National Rally’s lead in the polls, which credit it with 36% to 37% of voting intentions in the first round.
The RN bloc is “in a deep, important dynamic”, estimates Brice Teinturier, deputy general director of the Ipsos polling institute. “We cannot exclude, far from it, an absolute majority” at the end of the second round.
