“The cause of our ills is in one name: Macron!” Marine Le Pen pointed out Sunday “the rejection of the person” and “the project” of the head of state during a speech in Le Havre, but warned against “disorder and chaos”.

In front of 1,500 activists, it was for the boss of the French far right to “lay the groundwork for the post-Macron”, according to those around her, with “a speech of the president” to trace “the great visions”.

However, it is mainly Macronie that Marine Le Pen attacked, according to her represented by “casual and indifferent leaders”, “cut off from the people and realities, (who) consider the exercise of power as a test force with the country, a permanent showdown with the citizens”.

However, this “blind intransigence (…) is not the mark of firmness”, but that of “stiffening (and) feverishness”, she supports, deploring that “of a disputed reform , he brought the country to an institutional crisis”.

At a time when May 1 processions were setting off all over France at the call of the unions and left-wing parties, the patroness of the 88 RN deputies in the Assembly intends to hold her crest line of opposition to the reform but everything at a distance from the social movement.

“Never replace your ballot paper with a saucepan,” urged the party’s vice-president, Sébastien Chenu, at cocktail hour.

And if, according to Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron “is mistaken when he believes that usury can be a strategy”, it should not be necessary “for his childish stubbornness to tip the country into disorder and chaos”.

Still, Marine Le Pen points to “the rejection of the person” of the Head of State and “the rejection of his project of expropriation, dispossession and deconstruction by dismantling the social pact of which the pension reform is the illustration “.

She evokes the “transitions”: “demographic”, with according to her “project of migratory submersion”; “civilizational”, seen as “the one who instills wokism”; but also the “ecological” transition. But, she warns, “the allegedly ecological revolution that we are being sold is not a stroll among the flowers, but a leap into the nettles of punitive ecology”.

With its militant banquet, baptized “Feast of the Nation”, the RN intended to reconnect with its traditional May 1 event, now expunged from the reference to Joan of Arc (barely mentioned at the turn of a sentence) but turned towards “social peace” and work.

Marine Le Pen nevertheless assured the press that, on the way back to Paris, she would pass through Rouen to lay a wreath in honor of “the maiden”.

Le Havre? “A working-class land”, justifies Marine Le Pen, pretending to forget that the port city is led by Édouard Philippe – given side-by-side with it in the voting intentions for the next presidential election – as much as it was a place stronghold of the left and remains a union bastion.

“The bastion of resistance, the real one, is here: it’s us,” replied Jordan Bardella.

Several thousand people gathered a few kilometers from the Lepenist raout, without confrontation or incident, at the call of unions and left-wing parties.

It was a question of doubling the traditional parade of May 1st with a warning: “a certain number of people make the mistake of thinking that the RN could be an alternative in France”, warns Luc Sauvage, secretary general of the Le Havre local union of the CFDT.

But for the new president of the RN, who should again take the top of the list for the Europeans with the objective of “coming to the top”, “the Macron era will end and the time of the patriots has come”.

As for the presidential election of 2027, the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen used an astonishing double negative in front of journalists on Monday: “I am a candidate as long as I have not decided not to be”.

pab/lum/dch

01/05/2023 21:31:56 – Le Havre (AFP) – © 2023 AFP