Former Rhône RN official suspended from party for one year

Antoine Mellies (right), suspended from the RN for one year.

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The former departmental delegate of the National Rally in the Rhône, Antoine Mellies, was suspended from the party for a year after a disciplinary summons last week.

"I am appalled," said the regional elected on Tuesday, confirming information from the site of the weekly

.

Antoine Mellies was heard on October 27 by the party's conflict commission with another regional elected official from the RN, Agnès Marion.

The latter received a warning in this case which served as a "pretext" to settle accounts, according to internal party sources in Lyon.

When questioned, the chairman of this commission, Wallerand de Saint Just, refused to comment on these decisions.

Deprived of regional elections

The party officially reproached the defendants for having maintained, as head of the district list in the municipal elections in Lyon, a lawyer who was a candidate for the legislative elections in 2017, in the Rhône, under the label of "Jeanne committees" launched by Jean-Marie Le Pen.

What "destabilize the movement", according to their detractors.

The sanction pronounced against Antoine Mellies, already disembarked from his post of departmental delegate in July, prevents him from being invested for the next regional election in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

Two contenders for the head of the list are opposed locally: the former LFI Andrea Kotarac, a close friend of Antoine Mellies, and Alexis Jolly, party boss in Isère and close, him, Bruno Bilde, special advisor to Marine Le Pen and member of the Conflicts Commission.

Close to Marion Maréchal

These disciplinary summons also came a few weeks after criticisms of the RN strategy issued by Marine Le Pen's niece, Marion Maréchal, to whom Antoine Mellies and Agnès Marion are close.

Several members of the national investiture commission close to the former FN deputy (now RN) had also been removed from this body during the summer.

A third regional elected representative of the RN in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Sophie Robert, member of the executive board and also close to Marion Maréchal, is convened in November.

At the beginning of October, reacting to an article in the newspaper

which announced these summons by evoking a purge of the "marionists", Bruno Bilde had denied being in the process.

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