“Emergency is change”, said Jordan Bardella, new president of the National Rally, to the activists
Not surprisingly, Jordan Bardella agreed to the presidency of the National Rally (RN) on Saturday, November 5, announced the outgoing leader, Marine Le Pen, at a party congress in Paris. The MEP, who served as the interim presidency of the RN for a year, got 84.84% of the votes during the vote, which took place in the morning. Jordan Bardella is against the mayor of Perpignan, Louis Aliot (15.16%), during this ballot organized with 40,000 activists claimed by the far-right party.
Election favorite, he is the first “non-Le Pen” to lead the former National Front, created in 1972 by Jean-Marie Le Pen. “The 18e the FN/RN congress brings the greatest hope for our country, as long as there is time. Kudos to Jordan, national mentality for the Navy”reaction of the latter on Twitter.
In front of the activists, gathered at the Maison de la Mutualité (in Paris), said Jordan Bardella “measure the burden of this appointment with seriousness and humility”. “I think of two women without whom I would not be who I am today.He added: first of all, my mother, who raised me in financial poverty in Drancy, in Seine-Saint-Denis, (…) and the second person, you guessed it, is Marine Le Pen. (…) I want to tell him all my gratitude and pride. »
The new president of the RN also thanked the organizers of the ballot, then his opponent, to whom he offered the first vice-president of the party, “for the conduct of this campaign which took place in the spirit of brotherhood”. He finally confronted himself with the voters of Louis Aliot, affirming that“they have a place in the adventure to come”.
Jordan Bardella recalled the main lines of the RN program, including the fight against immigration. “The people of France are being forced to submit to a migration policy that is already[il] don’t choosedid he declare. France should not be the hotel of the world. » Mr. also gave Bardella winked at the right side of the party by reprimanding “a France that wants to turn identity into a curse”while his acquaintances at “identities”close to Eric Zemmour among others, was denounced by his opponents.
Referring to the upcoming elections, he added: “The urgency is the change. This is our ambition and this is our mission. »
Commoditization strategy
This change in party leadership should allow Marine Le Pen to focus on the National Assembly and her Elysian ambitions intact. The 27-year-old MEP has announced several times that he intends to support a new candidacy for Marine Le Pen in the presidential election in 2027. However, the exclusion of a representative of the RN for racist remarks is disrupting this expected enthronement.
The RN seems, in fact, to have caught up with its old demons when its representatives, including Marine Le Pen, were the only ones, on Friday, remaining seated during the hemicycle vote for the temporary exclusion of Grégoire de Fournas , elected by the Gironde, after a wave of anger sparked by his racist remarks.
The strategy of trivialization of the party, which Jordan Bardella promised to continue, has been shaken, especially since the sanctioned deputy regularly shows his support for the candidate.
Close to Marine Le Pen
In the beginning, however, the weekend was an opportunity to arrange a quiet transition in a party with a turbulent history. In fact, the result of the members’ vote, announced on Saturday morning at the Mutualité, in Paris, ended in a false suspense: after three months of campaigning, no one thought that the interim president could fail in front of his rival, the mayor of Perpignan, Louis Aliot.
This handover to Jordan Bardella should allow Marine Le Pen to free herself from the sometimes thankless internal affairs, while the center of the RN is now in the National Assembly, where the MP for Pas -de-Calais shines with a group of 89 elected officials and is bringing together its political and media base more than ever. “It is with some emotion that I now leave the presidency of the National Rally. Congratulations to our new President, Jordan Bardella, to whom I pass the torch today”, said Marine Le Pen.
Removed from the management of the RN, especially the difficult financial equation, he will be able to refine the fourth presidential candidacy, which no one in the party dares to question.
Jordan Bardella will now need to find his place, as the party has often reserved a cruel fate for its number two – “Sometimes Dauphin’s destiny runs aground”, summed up, in his time, Jean-Marie Le Pen. He is experiencing a meteoric rise for himself, starting in 2019 when he topped the RN list in the European elections, before winning the party’s interim presidency last year.
An RN figure denounces a “stunting” of the party
The election of Jordan Bardella was not to everyone’s taste. The mayor of Hénin-Beaumont, Steeve Briois, figure of the RN and support of Louis Aliot, denounced a “stunt” of the party after his exclusion from the new executive body headed by Jordan Bardella. In a statement, he said:
“While for months I have been alarming about a potential ‘re-radicalization’, I only see my dismissal as a punishment for wanting to raise awareness about a phenomenon confirmed by the facts, because the circles of the legs were made so that some fundamentalists, up to the adoption of positions on the right, contrary to my view of “neither right nor left” that prevailed for decades in the National Front. »
After his election as party president on Saturday, Jordan Bardella formed a new executive bureau led by those close to him, although he offered the party’s vice-presidency to his opponent, Louis Aliot. Failing to be appointed to the powerful office of the executive, the latter announced his refusal to sit, as Mr. Bardella proposed to him, in the national office – a body with less power -, “which hopefully is just an excuse to not admit what looks more like the beginning of a purge against those who defend the social line”he attacks.
“I only see it as a setback, and I hope that the RN does not give up on the great “nationalist compromise”, this strategy of combining the radical right, which failed in the presidential election, instead of all of patriots on the right. and on the left”, he continued. Jordan Bardella, who swears by him “honesty” and his “honesty” to Marine Le Pen, was criticized by his detractors for his acquaintances in “identities” or too much tolerance for what happened to Eric Zemmour.
“Some excess still proves me right”said mr. Briois, that’s it “It is regrettable that years of demonization are reduced to nothing with the sole aim of pleasing an electoral minority, with the risk of a new marginalization of the RN”.
