Marion Marechal-Le Pen might well walk up the steps of the world-famous Cannes Film Festival in southeast France next spring as leader of the region, if she wins elections there today.
Her National Front (FN) party pulled off a historic win last weekend, topping the vote in the first round of regional polls, in a breakthrough that shook up the nation’s political landscape before presidential elections in 2017.
If the party wins one or more regions in the run-off today, that would be a first for the party, leaving the French public and much of the wider world to contemplate: What would happen in a region ruled by such a party?
The party certainly plans measures to please its supporters; regional subsidies to charities helping migrants would be axed, for example, while schools would be restricted in offering alternatives to pork in their canteens.
Marechal-Le Pen — who is more conservative than her aunt, National Front leader Marine Le Pen — has said she would scrap aid to abortion providers.
The actions of National Front politicians who became town mayors last year might also offer clues — David Rachline took down the EU flag from the front of the Frejus town hall in southeastern France, while Steeve Briois ended the practice of giving a human rights group free use of municipal premises of Henin-Beaumont in the north.
Any changes are likely to be largely symbolic. The National Front aims to use any regional wins as a platform in its quest for national power in 2017 — so it will not seek to implement its national manifesto, but rather seek to prove it can responsibly govern large constituencies and offer stability.
“The key word will be pragmatism, not ideology,” Marechal-Le Pen told a last campaign rally on Thursday evening, after opinion polls showed her party’s prospects have waned since the first round and that tactical voting could keep it out of power in its key target regions.
Since Marechal-Le Pen took the National Front over from her maverick, ex-paratrooper father, Jean-Marie, in 2011, she has strived to build a base of locally elected officials to help “de-demonize” the party and target the 2017 national elections.
“High schools will still be built, trains will still run, vocational training will still be carried out, but to attract attention and strengthen their political hold, they are set to carry out symbolic decisions that cost nothing, but are highly visible,” political analyst Joel Gombin said. “They will stage the ‘FN against the system’ line.”
While regional councils have no direct powers over France’s migration policy, the National Front’s top candidates have said they would act the only way they can at that level, by putting an end to any subsidies for non-governmental organizations that help migrants.
“It makes no sense economically that public money goes to help foreign workers and migrants in a region where unemployment is higher than national average,” Marechal-Le Pen told reporters in an interview last month.
She said she would also scrap development aid subsidies and use the money instead to boost exports for French firms. Along the same lines, Marine Le Pen’s electoral leaflets deride the northern French region’s financing of schools in Africa, calling them “unbelievable” examples of wasted money.
Marechal-Le Pen has also said that she would stop subsidies to family-planning charities, which she accuses of being politicized and of promoting abortion.
French Minister of Education Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said this week she was worried about what would happen to high schools if the National Front won regional power.
Vallaud-Belkacem said she feared debates over school canteen food would resurface — with the issue of whether alternatives should be offered when pork is on the menu.
Marechal-Le Pen’s 115 page-long program for the Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie region says French secularism would be “strictly implemented.”
Schools that do not offer alternative menus should not introduce them, according to the plan. Those that do should only be allowed to continue doing so if there are “nutritional reasons,” it says.
The National Front would not go further than such steps, party officials and analysts said, as it is keen not to repeat the mistakes made in the 1990s, when some measures were struck down by courts and damaged the party’s credibility.
“We will absolutely respect the law until we are in government at the national level and can change it,” Marechal-Le Pen said.
An American scientist convicted of lying to US authorities about payments from China while he was at Harvard University has rebuilt his research lab in Shenzhen, China, to pursue technology the Chinese government has identified as a national priority: embedding electronics into the human brain. Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and restoring movement in paralyzed people. It also has potential military applications: Scientists at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting
Indonesian police have arrested 13 people after shocking images of alleged abuse against small children at a daycare center went viral, sparking outrage across the nation, officials said on Monday. Police on Friday last week raided Little Aresha, a daycare center in Yogyakarta on Java island, following a report from a former employee. CCTV footage circulating on social media showed children, most younger than two, lying on the floor wearing only diapers, their hands and feet bound with rags. The police have confirmed that the footage is authentic. Police said they also found 20 children crammed into a room just 3m by 3m. “So
From post offices and parks to stations and even the summit of Mount Fuji, Japan’s vending machines are ubiquitous, but with the rapid pace of inflation cooling demand for their drinks, operators are being forced to rethink the business. Last month beverage giant DyDo Group Holdings announced it would remove about 20,000 vending machines — about 7 percent of their stock nationwide — by January next year, to “reconstruct a profitable network.” Pokka Sapporo Food & Beverage, based in Nagoya, also said last month it would sell its 40,000-machine operation to Osaka-based Lifedrink Co. “The strength of the vending machine
A highway bomb attack in a restive region of southwestern Colombia on Saturday killed 14 people and injured at least 38, the latest spate of violence ahead of next month’s presidential election. Authorities blamed the attack in the Cauca department — a conflict-ridden, coca-growing region — on dissidents of the now-disbanded FARC guerrilla army, who have been sowing violence across the country. “Those who carried out this attack ... are terrorists, fascists and drug traffickers,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on social media. “I want our very best soldiers to confront them,” he added. The leftist leader blamed the bombing
RSS