PARIS (AP) — As it stands on the threshold of power in France, the far-right National Rally is facing scrutiny over some of the candidates it hopes will secure a majority in power for the party in Sunday’s legislative elections, including a woman who now pulled from the high risk race over a photo of her wearing a World War II-era Nazi officer’s peaked cap.
Other National Rally candidates whose suitability is being questioned by the party’s critics and opponents include a woman who, according to French media, once held a municipal employee hostage at gunpoint, a man who may not be eligible to serve as legislator because he is under guardianship. , a candidate in Brittany who tweeted that “gas brought justice to the victims of the Shoah” and others who face questions about his absences from the campaign.
Investigating candidates’ backgrounds online by French media and citizens risks puncturing the polished image that leader of the National Rally and three-time presidential candidate Marina LePen has sought to shape his party to free itself from its historical links to anti-Semitism, racism and France’s painful World War II collaboration with the Nazi occupation.
It also raised questions about the party’s readiness to wield power if you get an absolute majority in Sunday’s second round vote to determine the composition of the 577-seat National Assembly, which would give Le Pen the advantage to force President Emmanuel Macron to accept his 28-year-old protégé, Jordan Bardela, as Prime Minister. French political analysts say the party’s electoral machine has struggled to keep up with rising voter support, including finding and evaluating candidates to represent it.
This lightning campaign proved particularly difficult for all parties, with just three weeks of preparation. Macron called the surprise legislative election on June 9, after his centrist alliance suffered a punishing defeat at the hands of the National Rally in the French vote for the European Parliament.
“They tend to take what they have in hand, even if it means not paying attention,” said far-right expert Jean-Yves Camus, a researcher at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations.
“There is the top of the basket, but there is also the bottom of the basket, with candidates who are often embarrassing to them.”
In Mayenne, in northwestern France, citizens unearthed and shared a press clipping from the regional newspaper Ouest-France, reporting in 1995 that National Rally candidate Annie Bell, then using the nickname Jaccoud, had taken an employee of the mayor for several hours. The newspaper said she was heavily in debt, entered the local town hall armed with a rifle and took a secretary hostage. A shot was fired, but no one was injured, the newspaper reported. Bell advanced from the first round of voting last Sunday to the decisive second round next weekend.
The clipping, shared online, was published by several media outlets, including Ouest-France. It is unclear whether she was convicted and the Associated Press was unable to find any contact information for her. A party spokesperson did not immediately respond to an AP request for comment.
Party vice-president Louis Aliot said on Wednesday that this was an isolated case and that as the party fielded hundreds of candidates, he was not aware of all of their backgrounds.
“This is one of the few curiosities that may exist among all the candidates,” he said, speaking to France Info radio.
But other candidates were also criticized.
After Ludivine Daoudi received almost 20% of the votes in her district in the first round, the National Rally announced on Tuesday that it would withdraw her from the second round after a photo of her wearing a Nazi officer’s cap, with a swastika, emerged online. social.
“She doesn’t deny that she took this photo,” said Philippe Chapron, regional representative of the National Rally, in a radio interview. He stressed that the photograph, “clearly in bad taste”, was taken “a long time ago” and before Daoudi joined the party.
Candidates from other parties were also criticized. A campaign video shared on social media by Sebastien Delogu, a lawmaker from the far-left France Insubmissa party who was re-elected in the first round, showed the head of Jewish lawmaker Habib Meyer next to a frozen pizza box and an oven. . Meyer said he considered the video anti-Semitic. Delogu denied this accusation. The National Rally and Unsubmissive France exchanged accusations of anti-Semitism in the campaign.
Another National Rally candidate in Mayenne, Paule Veyre de Soras, was asked in a video interview about critics’ claims that the party still has xenophobes and racists in its ranks. She responded that this no longer happened, adding that “I myself am Catalan, my grandfather was born in Barcelona, I am Jewish as an ophthalmologist and, as a dentist, Muslim.”
Veyre de Soras won more than 28% of her district’s votes, setting her up to possibly become a legislator in the second round.
In some districts, National Rally candidates did not include a photograph of themselves or biographical information in campaign leaflets which instead showed only Le Pen and Bardella. Some National Rally candidates were seen so rarely on the campaign trail that their opponents compared them to ghosts.
In the Jura region, National Rally candidate Thierry Mosca is subject to court-ordered limited guardianship, according to regional newspaper Le Progrès, meaning he is not eligible, if elected, to be a legislator. French broadcaster France 3 quoted Mosca as saying that the protection measure, which a judge can order for adults considered in difficulty and in need of help, was applied to him because he has financial problems.
Regarding this situation, Aliot said that some candidates do not inform the party about their judicial records “even if we ask them”.
“If they lied, they will be fired.”
