Paris (AFP)
MP Louis Aliot publicly announced that he was separated from National Rally President (RN) Marine Le Pen, whom he had been a companion since 2009.
"This happens to a marriage on two," said Mr. Aliot, questioned on this subject by the newspaper L'Opinion published Thursday. "There is still a lot of emotions between us, politically, we stay on the same line, I have always been in support, I am and I will always be a sailor".
More than 1,000 kilometers separate the constituencies of the two deputies, that of Marine Le Pen in the Pas-de-Calais and that of Louis Aliot in the eastern Pyrenees.
Member of the executive board (management) of the RN, Mr. Aliot has "withdrawn" since January from the RN without leaving them, to prepare for the municipal election of Perpignan, a city he failed to to conquer in 2014 and that it seeks this time without the label RN to favor a "local gathering".
Vice-president of the National Front (now RN) from 2011 to 2018, this lawyer is a respected figure in the party. At the last congress in March 2018, Louis Aliot had been the best elected in the party's parliament (national council).
He joined the FN in the late 1980s alongside Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter. Appointed general secretary in 2005, he earned the nickname "Loulou the purge", dismissing the most radical members and working to the "de-demonization" of the party.
© 2019 AFP