A new far -right party competing with him, family infidelities and his relationship with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Marine Le Pen overcame all sorts of hurdles and managed, for the second consecutive time, to go through the second round of the French presidential election as the standard-bearer for indigent citizens.

Le Pen will be content because he has almost achieved remove the association of his surname from the inheritance of his father, Jean-Mariea furious anti-immigration politician and founder of the National Front (FN) who made a splash in 2002 when he qualified for the second round.

Marine has been looking for a decade gradually softening the image of your party.

He changed its name, from National Front to National Group; he scrapped his euro abandonment project after a lofty defeat against Emmanuel Macron in 2017 and devoted himself to talking about the economic hardship of ordinary Frenchmen, rather than foreigners. A bet with results.

According to polls, the French judge who is the National Group candidate is “more aware of the concerns of the French” than the outgoing president, Emmanuel Macron, who won -by a narrow margin- in the first round of elections. elections held this Sunday.

Control energy prices, increase wages, reduce taxes for SMEs. Le Pen made these reasons for him, expanding his fame despite his electoral strongholds in the northeast and southeast of the country.

In relation to its historic landmark, immigration, it maintains its radical position on restricting subsidies to foreigners such as unemployment, in addition to islamic headscarf ban.

old fences

Le Pen has overcome several hurdles in recent months. Ang economic hardship of his party -has to pay a huge debt to a Russian bank that has now passed into the hands of a Hungarian- joined the division of the extreme right-wing camp in the interference of talk show host Éric Zemmour, who attracted important people from in Le Pen’s entourage, along with his niece Marion Marechal, granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen and representative of the National Front between 2012-2017.

“Every time I fall, I get up. I’m not afraid of ambushes or infidelity,” Marine Le Pen summed up at a campaign rally.

Another obstacle to be overcome is the war in Ukraine. When Zemmour sank into the polls for his long-standing admiration for Putin, he stood firm, despite many recalling the image of the Russian president smilingly welcoming him, with a smile, to the Kremlin ahead of the 2017 election. .

To break away from the image of complacency with the Russian president, Le Pen supported France to open its arms to all Ukrainians fleeing their country.

family heritage

Marine Le Pen, the youngest of three daughters of Jean-Marie Le Pen and Pierrette Lalanne, grew up west of Paris, in a bourgeois and Catholic environment.

Traumatized him attack his father in 1976 -an explosion in which he and his family came out unscathed-, he made sure it was only coincidence that he entered politics.

After practicing law between 1992 and 1998, he helped his father reach the second round of 2002 – leaving socialist Lionel Jospin in the gutter – and measured himself against Jacques Chirac. Since then, Le Pen has chained public positions and took FN’s reins in 2011.

During his tenure, he fired his own father in 2015 for failing to retract some statements that relativized Nazi gas chambers, although years later they reconciled. He also removed his right arm from 2017, Florian Philippot, supporter of the failed project to leave the euro.

A mother of three and separated, she recalled at several campaign events her bad conscience for not being with her as much as she wanted. He also popularized his love of cats on networks, where he was often photographed.

By Antonio Torres del Cerro, EFE agency

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