The far right Marine Le Pen admitted his defeat this Sunday against liberal Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the French presidential elections, but denounced the “unfair procedure” and considered that his results, which according to projections put him above 40% of the vote, “is a victory in themselves”.

“In this defeat I see a form of hope. This result represents our leaders and for the leaders of Europe a challenge they could not ignorer, as well as the aspiration for a major change, ”Le Pen also warned in a statement minutes after learning of the vote projections.

More importantly, he announced that he would not leave and he would lead the legislative campaign next June to try to unite all opposition to the re-elected president, Emmanuel Macron.

He was right “There is a high risk that Macron will seize all sources of Executive and Legislative power” because of the majority system that favors the president to regain the majority in the National Assembly which gives him independence.

His intention to prevent this is that his party, the National Association (RN), is working “to unite all those who, wherever they come from, want to join forces against Emmanuel Macron.”

In the now-completed campaign, he accepted the fact that “the ideas we represent have reached their highest level in the second round of the presidential election despite two weeks (of the campaign) of dishonest and violent procedures. “

Although he made sure of that he is “no resentment or resentment”was not deprived of hope that “the five-year opening will not be ruined by the contemptible practices of the former and Emmanuel Macron will do nothing to fix the fractures that divide the country and afflict our countrymen”

Le Pen moderate his image and he chose the electoral for purchasing power, rather than his extreme right -wing program, to reach the presidency of France. He did not succeed, but his ideas attracted a larger number of voters.

In his third attempt to reach Elysee, the 53-year-old candidate for the National Association (RN) got between 41.8% and 42.4% of the vote, according to initial estimates, nearly 10 points more than in 2017 when he fell to centrist Emmanuel Macron with 33.9% of the vote.

“Whatever” is the result, “I made the campaign I wanted”, This lawyer by practice advanced on Friday, that since he led the National Front (FN), founded by his father, in 2011, has tried to erase his image as an extremist.

Jean-Marie Le Pen had already reached the milestone of the ballot fight in 2002, when lost with about 18% de vote against conservative Jacques Chirac, but with the image of a racist, anti-Semitic party, nostalgic for colonial Algeria.

The French deputy also separates prominent members of these sectors, including his father, and others join the ranks of his rival Éric Zemmour, who, according to observers, seeks to revive the traditional FN and helped him look less radical. .

Marine was the only one of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s three children who initially refused to enter politics. however, the relationship with his father has always marked his political careerbetween rejection and seeking recognition.

When he was eight years old, an attack against his father destroyed the front of his house. This trauma plagued her, as she says, as did her parents ’public divorce war and her time as a single mother.

Makeover

Although he did not achieve his dream of moving to the Elysee, he was able to partially make the transformation work.. Half of the French see him as sociable and close to peopleahead of Macron, though not much better than his rival, according to a recent Elabe poll.

“Change is not going to be enough, alone, to achieve a vote ‘for’ or to avoid a vote ‘against’ ”, pointed out expert Gilles Finchelstein, director of the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, where Le Pen failed to be“ credible. notion “.

His campaign focused on criticizing rising energy pricesin the context of fears about losing purchasing power, and ensuring that it does not delay the retirement age from 62 to 65 years as Macron suggests, but advance it to 60 in some cases.

To differentiate himself from his rival, considered “arrogant”, this cat breeder, born on August 5, 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy city west of Paris, visited markets, climbed on tractors and gave intimate interviews …

what is to comeang

His attempt to trivialize the extreme right and attract the left-wing electorate, key to the ballot, has made his rivals from the far-right party ¡Reconquista !, along with his niece Marion Maréchal, they even asked him “don’t forget the values ​​correctly”.

“Her program has hardly changed from the basics of FN,” said Cécile Alduy, a professor at Stanford University. “But she chose a different vocabulary to justify it: in the name of secularism and republican values, and even feminism.”

His plans were to stop migration and fight “Islamist ideology”: reserving social assistance for the French, ending family reunions or banning the veil on public space. The latter dealt with Macron harshly during the campaign.

After your third defeat, what do you do now? “In principle I will never introduce myself again, but I will continue what I have been doing for many years: defend the French. I don’t know what position, but where I will be more decisive, ”he told the Journal du Dimanche (JDD) in March.

Le Pen is facing a judicial investigation for an alleged fraud in hiring assistants when he was an MEP. And his party must repay a million -dollar debt contracted in 2014 to Russian lenders, which he got the accusations of “depending” of Russia by Vladimir Putin.

Marine Le Pen, a blonde with strong character and bright eyes, presents herself as a “modern woman” and unmarried. This mother of three has been twice divorced, separated from her last partner, Louis Aliot, and lived with a childhood friend whom she cared for.

Source: EFE and AFP