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FRENCH National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen rejected a call from his daughter yesterday to leave politics.
Present party leader Marine Le Pen had said on Thursday that she would seek disciplinary action against her father after the loudmouthed 86-year-old was quoted this week calling France’s Spanish-born Prime Minister Manuel Valls “the immigrant.”
The eccentric fascist also defended Philippe Petain, the leader of the wartime government that co-operated with nazi Germany.
And last week he defended a past comment that the nazi gas chambers were a “detail of history.”
Ms Le Pen fears that her father’s comments will hurt her efforts to widen the party’s appeal.
The neofascist party has seen its popularity rise since Marine Le Pen took over from her father as leader in 2011 and has sought to broaden its appeal by trying to shake off the party’s anti-semitic image.
It has won outright control of some city councils and some of its officials have been elected to regional councils, while several polls have suggested that Ms Le Pen could make it into a second round of presidential elections in 2017.
But Jean-Marie Le Pen insisted that he would fight any disciplinary action by the party’s leadership and would seek the candidacy for presidency of the south-eastern Provence, Alps and Cote d’Azur region, which his daughter opposes.
The party’s political bureau meets on April 17 to choose its candidates.
Mr Le Pen, who is the party’s honorary president, is loathe to see it dilute the extreme anti-semitic and racist image he nourished for decades. “Madame Le Pen is blowing up her own party,” he claimed.
Mr Le Pen has been convicted numerous times of racism or anti-semitism and his daughter has said that she can offer no explanation for his provocative behaviour.
He was the face of the National Front since its founding in 1972 and built the party into a significant political force.
He shocked and frightened the French political Establishment when he made it to the run-off of the 2002 presidential vote.
by Our Foreign Desk
