Is this young blonde lady, smiling and polite, whom many would like to have as a sister, wife, or daughter, going to defy the odds and create a surprise by becoming, at just 25 years old, the youngest president of a Region?
While the polls may suggest it, the activists of the National Front and her personal fans have no doubt. Last night, in a Nice palace, on the occasion of the last rally of the election campaign, they cheered her as if the official results were already in.
More than 2,000 people were there to celebrate her in an atmosphere reminiscent of certain corners of a football stadium or other sports arena.
Of course, the presence of Marine Le Pen, who came to support her, gave the evening a national character. Moreover, the FN president, who is also herself a candidate for the presidency of the Picardy-North-Pas de Calais Region, barely touched on regional campaign themes to focus on general political issues. It’s known that for her, these elections are only a transitional step before the big race in 2017.
Marion Le Pen, the youngest member of the National Assembly, is in a different dynamic: no patriotic voters as for her aunt, no extensive security measures, no national preference as a criterion for public policies, not even nationalism to oppose Europe and internalization, reversal of alliances in international politics, and finally, no identity retreat (closed borders, blocked immigration…) as a remedy for the rise of Islamism.
It is true that the Region, despite the new powers of the Our Law, does not have the ability to do whatever it wants and especially not to deal with sovereign themes.
Transportation, economic development, and professional training are and will be the main focuses of the action of the one who will preside over the Region in the next mandate.
Marion Maréchal Le Pen and her departmental list leaders (all present at her side, with Olivier Bettati in great pomp as host, whose level of personal opposition towards Christian Estrosi was clear) did not get too involved in their program: announced changes compared to Vauzelle’s management, deemed catastrophic (needless to say). Severe criticisms but without adding too much: saying that subsidies to associations not responding to the general interest will be cut does not make a social policy, directing aids primarily to regional SMEs/SMIs does not make an economic development policy; and finally, improving the match between apprenticeship and company needs also does not make a professional training policy.
But, in fact, for the National Front candidate, these are only marginal orientations. What matters to her and her running mates is the method: making the ordinary citizens, who rightly or wrongly consider themselves excluded or at best marginalized from the process, feel that they are being listened to and will be taken care of.
The real fracture of this time is this form of social autism between the base and the elites. This is where the FN finds its ground and uses them as levers to propel itself towards electoral success. Marion Maréchal Le Pen, astonishingly mature despite her young age, is the product of this context.
With the assurance of her (political) strength and the audacity of youth, she does not shy away from the battle: “Our opponents are only dead leaves, their only ambition is to be in the wind. We are the trees with deep roots, which, as Mistral said, are the ones that grow the tallest.”
Challenge or epitaph?
