Paris (AFP)

Marine Le Pen launches, Sunday in Paris, her party in the last straight line of the municipal where she intends to consolidate her local anchorage thanks to external rallies, including former LR.

This ballot, traditionally unfavorable to the National Rally, is one of the "steps" to cross to reach the Elysee, according to the far-right leader, who presents herself as the first opponent of Emmanuel Macron, also eager to pave with these elections its way until 2022.

"The next elections, municipal, departmental and regional are the last three pit stops before the arrival of the race which aims to bring Marine le Pen to the Elysee," summarized the vice-president of RN Jordan Bardella on Saturday of a trip to Calais.

The RN intends in March to "continue the reconquest" begun in the Europeans, from which it emerged victorious, by opening its lists but by first investing its areas of strength.

The president of the RN will close the day with a speech at 4:15 p.m. at the Maison de la Chimie, after the interventions of candidates and outgoing mayors - ten - who will boast their results. "The first objective is to say + look at the management of RN in cities, it works +", argues former Sarkozy Minister Thierry Mariani, elected MEP with the support of RN.

Marine Le Pen will not fail to reiterate her fierce opposition to the pension reform, disputed for more than a month, and to Emmanuel Macron.

- Dike -

New compared to 2014, the RN opened its lists to candidates outside the party. Some of which occupy the first place, as in Carpentras (Vaucluse) with the retired general Bertrand de la Chesnais.

RN candidates will also present themselves without a label, such as Louis Aliot, the ex-companion of Marine Le Pen, in Perpignan (Pyrénées-Orientales), the largest city sought by the party.

The RN is also counting on the collapse of Republicans in the Europeans to convince elected officials and activists to join it. Thierry Mariani has thus reactivated his Popular Right movement to promote "a rally around the RN".

If the dyke between the two parties cracks among activists, it has not completely fallen on the elected side, rare to lead lists. The former boss of LR in the Hérault Sébastien Pacull, who will be present on Sunday, is an exception. He will lead to Sète a list of "union of the rights" supported by the RN, in an approach similar to that of the outgoing mayor of Béziers Robert Ménard.

The party has also limited its ambitions to its areas of strength in order to avoid resignations as after 2014, while finding candidates is not an easy task.

The RN especially wants to irrigate around the ten cities already conquered, in its bastions of Nord-Pas-de-Calais and around the Mediterranean. Including with opposition advisers likely to run in the departmental and regional elections of 2021.

- Couacs -

"We are not going to make figures but rather quality" thanks to "more trained" list heads, we stress to the RN, which will present "almost" as many lists (600) as in 2014 What did not prevent some hiccups as in Strasbourg where the invested candidate who had, according to the RN, "hidden" convictions for racist violence, had to throw in the towel.

The party does not give quantified objectives. According to France inter, the RN sees around fifty cities that can be won, instead of 100 as previously assessed.

According to a study for the Jean Jaurès foundation, the party will have more difficulty in big cities, where the wealthier and more qualified electorate is not favorable to it, and very small cities, where it has "no sufficient militant forces ", while membership has declined since 2017, and where" the demonization is far from over ".

To set an example, three out of six deputies (Louis Aliot, Sébastien Chenu and Ludovic Pajot) will lead the lists. Marine Le Pen, already in the preparations for 2022, will not show up.

© 2020 AFP