Saint-Cloud (France) (AFP)
Jean-Marie Le Pen wishes his daughter Marine Le Pen's victory in the 2022 presidential election, even if he no longer recognizes himself in the party she has chaired for 10 years and which he himself led for nearly 40 years.
"I wish Marine Le Pen was in the second round and even, if I dare say so, in the third. She or a candidate who represents the national and popular right for which I have fought for 50 years," said in an interview to AFP the co-founder of the National Front, which has become the National Rally, from its offices in Montretout in Saint-Cloud (Hauts-de-Seine).
He thinks the RN president has a chance.
"I'm not saying that she has no chance (of winning), on the contrary".
"But it all depends on (other) candidates, if there are many, or few" and "events", "of the economic, social, political and even medical situation," notes the former far-right leader, aged 92 years old.
He praises the "remarkable qualities" of his granddaughter Marion Maréchal, "intelligence, courage, culture, will", but does not forget the "exceptional qualities" of his daughter, who now holds "a position prominent in French politics ".
He predicts an "abundance" of candidates in the presidential election, which "rather favors candidates whose names are already well known, such as Marine Le Pen".
He bets that "these are the personalities who will mark the ballot", due to an "individualization of politics", regretting that all parties, including the RN, have "gradually lost their importance, their strength" .
Jean-Marie Le Pen "does not necessarily see Emmanuel Macron as a candidate" but he thinks that on the right, the candidates will be "legion" and that the Republicans party can "explode".
The left, he "believes seriously injured", because "in politics we are never dead".
"No", the former president of the FN does not recognize himself in the party chaired by his daughter, who excluded him in 2015 after his slippages during the Shoah, and whose name change was for him "a rupture ".
But "it is probably the political formation which is closest to what I think", affirms to AFP Mr. Le Pen, by welcoming that the party "has come closer to the traditional line of the FN", nor right or left, since the departure in 2017 of the former number two Florian Philippot.
In his Logbook released Friday, the founder of the FN qualifies as a "strategic error" the "demonization" led by his daughter.
"When you want to demonize yourself, it's already recognizing that you were the devil and that you deserved to be," he said: "You have to defend your ideas, and it is obvious that they always seem diabolical to your opponents ".
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