AFP/Paris
An overwhelming 94% of France’s National Front (FN) members have voted in favour of stripping former leader Jean-Marie Le Pen of his title of honorary president, the far-right party announced on Wednesday.
The release of the results of the postal ballot, held earlier this month, marked the latest salvo in a bitter and public feud between the 87-year-old FN founder and his daughter Marine, who now runs the party and is seeking to oust her firebrand father.
The ballot has no legal validity, however, after a court on Tuesday agreed with Le Pen senior that it violated the party’s internal rules.
Still, the FN leadership in a statement urged the veteran politician to take heed of the vote outcome and “bow to the popular will” of the party members.
Of the FN’s roughly 51,500 members, around 55% took part in the ballot on whether to change the FN’s statutes and scrap Jean-Marie Le Pen’s post as honorary president.
Le Pen himself had urged members to abstain from voting and scored a legal victory by getting a court to block the vote, a ruling that was upheld on appeal.
In a blog post, he condemned the publication of the results despite the court ruling, calling it a political manoeuvre that was “outside the law”.
Marine Le Pen ejected her father in May after he repeated his view that the Nazi gas chambers were a “detail” of history.
But the elder Le Pen’s suspension was later cancelled by a court, which found it “violated statutory rules” by not specifying it was a temporary measure pending a disciplinary procedure. The FN is appealing that ruling.
On Tuesday, the party expressed its “surprise” at “a series of court decisions that aim to preserve a title that Jean-Marie Le Pen obviously no longer deserves, given his increasingly unspeakable behaviour”.
While the FN is still anti-EU and anti-immigration, it has worked hard to soften its image since Marine took over from her father in 2011 and has seen its popularity soar, enjoying a series of election successes.
Le Pen: remains honorary FN president.
