Person of Interest: France’s Marine Le Pen

                       by David Parmer / Tokyo

There is the distinct possibility that the president of the National Front party, Marine Le Pen will become the next president of France. Possible–and more and more likely. A trend that saw Donald Trump elected to America’s highest office, that saw Britain pull the plug on the European Union in its BREXIT vote and has seen the rise of the right in Europe just might carry her to the Elysee Palace.

Le Pen, daughter of the founder of the National Front, Jean Marie Le Pen was born in August 1968. At age 18 she joined the National Front. She studied law, received an MA in 1991 and became a practicing attorney. In 2004 she became a member of the European Parliament. Then, in 2012 she came in third in France’s presidential election after Francois Hollande and Nicholas Sarkozy. 

Marine Le Pen is considered more moderate than her father; she has done housecleaning in the National Front and eliminated its undesirable elements. She does, however, maintain the core values of her party, such as:

• She wants France to leave the Euro and the EU
• She wants France out of NATO
• She shuns the World Bank, WTO and IMF
• She is against the regularization of illegal immigrants
• She is pro-Russian

In the near future there just might be a major democracy that elects its first female president, but it won’t be the US and it won’t be in Washington, and it won’t be the Star Spangled Banner that is played when she takes the oath of office.

Photo: Blandine Le Cain via flickr

Marine Le Pen Wikipedia