PFor Marine Le Pen, it was a necessary step. This Sunday, January 5, the figurehead of the National Rally will be the first representative of the opposition to go to the island of Mayotte after the destructive passage of Hurricane Chido. A promise made by the former presidential candidate on the evening of December 31, during video greetings, posted on specially dedicated social networks.
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Presented by Marine Le Pen as “a message of infinite fraternity and friendship” to the Mahorais, who placed her well ahead of the second round of the last presidential election, with 59% of the votes. Before crowning his heir apparent, Jordan Bardella, during the last European elections by granting him 53% of the votes cast. Hegemonic scores, witness to the exponential progression of the nationalist movement in Mayotte and more broadly in all overseas territories. To the West Indies.
It seems a long time ago when, in 1987, Jean-Marie Le Pen, president of the National Front at the time, was unable to set foot on the tarmac at Martinique airport due to the strong hostility of demonstrators against him. . The flame party's score went from single to double in the overseas territories between the presidential elections of 2012 and 2017, before literally exploding during the 2022 edition, despite a context of strong abstention.
With votes exceeding 60% in the second round in Guyana, Martinique and Guadeloupe. During the last European elections, the National Rally came first in ten of the eleven former French Overseas Territories. The result of a long-standing strategy, coordinated in particular by Jacques Chirac's former overseas advisor, André Rougé, who joined Marine Le Pen shortly before the 2017 presidential election. electorate. If Sarkozy had been at all interested in it, he would have had a second term,” said Serine, this former member of the RPR and then the UMP.
ALSO READ Presidential election: Marine Le Pen overthrows overseasVery different from each other, marked by disparate issues, the overseas territories have seen the progression of the flame party on their soil for multiple reasons, in addition to a strong rejection of the President of the Republic. It is thus more the social discourse of Marine Le Pen which seduced Martinique and Guadeloupe. The Antilles experienced significant mobilizations during the “Yellow Vests” crisis in 2018, then during Covid-19 against the health pass, on which the RN was able to surf.
On the other hand, it is the anti-immigration discourse which has largely prevailed in the territories of Guyana or Mayotte, prey to significant waves of migration from Suriname for the first and the Comoros for the second. “Mayotte is our future if we do nothing. It’s the same thing as in mainland France, but worse,” underlined, in the middle of the presidential campaign, Marine Le Pen – nicknamed “Tati Mariama” locally – before listing the consequences of immigration in terms of insecurity. , congestion of public services and dissuasion of economic investments on the island.
The overseas “paradox” of the RN
“We are in reality the only ones to see wide and far,” RN MEP André Rougé convinces himself. While for twenty years, successive governments have navigated by sight, installing patches here and there with the ultimate solution being proposals for institutional revision, we have been able to propose a program law for the short, medium and long term. That is to say capable of resolving security and immigration problems first, of working towards the economic development of these territories, then, in order to succeed in transforming them into true French hubs. »
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This push by the RN into the overseas territories nevertheless hides a paradox. Particularly powerful during national elections, the flame party is struggling to find a place in the local political landscape, where, due to a lack of candidates, it is still unable to establish itself. It has only one departmental councilor from Mayotte, a mayor and two regional councilors also from Reunion. “Things are changing. Success leads to success and the Ultramarines have now understood that the RN was not the FN,” says André Rougé.
For the first time in its history, the RN managed to elect two overseas deputies, out of the 24 in the chamber, during the legislative elections of July 2024: Anchya Bamana, deputy for Mayotte, and Joseph Rivière, elected from La Meeting. During the last regional elections of 2021, the flame party only managed to present candidates in Guadeloupe and Reunion, to collect respectively 3.42% and 1.74% of the votes in the first round. The party had not found a head of list neither in Martinique nor in Guyana. Proof that the serious shortcomings of the National Rally in terms of human resources are not confined to the mainland.
