Le Pen: refused to stick around for the disciplinary hearing.
AFP/Nanterre
France’s far-right patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen refused yesterday to attend a disciplinary hearing over his controversial outbursts that sparked a bitter dispute with his daughter, who now leads the National Front (FN).
Patience with the 86-year-old rabble-rouser has run thin within the party in recent weeks after he reiterated his view that the Nazi gas chambers were merely a “detail of history” and made comments about defending the “white world”.
The elder Le Pen showed up yesterday for a meeting at the FN headquarters in Nanterre west of Paris to discuss upcoming regional elections.
But he refused to stick around for a disciplinary hearing over his recent comments called by his daughter Marine Le Pen, who took over the leadership in 2011.
He said the hearing was “detrimental to my dignity”.
The FN patriarch also said that there was no question of retirement, saying that “they will have to kill me” to silence him.
Marine Le Pen said on Sunday that her father no longer represented the anti-immigration party.
“Jean-Marie Le Pen should no longer be able to talk in the name of the National Front, his comments are against the fixed (party) line,” she told French radio.
Removing him as honorary president of the party would require convening a party congress, which has not been ruled out by his daughter.
Marine Le Pen has been actively trying to distance the party from its racist and anti-Semitic image as she plans her bid for the next French presidential election in 2017.