KEY POINTS:
PARIS - Moving away from blunt racism, French nationalist leader Jean-Marie Le Pen folded a flavour of save-the-planet evangelism into his rhetoric yesterday as he launched his fifth bid for the presidency.
But Le Pen, whose spin-doctor daughter, Martine, is credited with softening his image, may not be able to run in the April 22 first round. He admits that he has not yet secured the legal requirement of 500 endorsements from elected officials.
Speaking in front of 2500 supporters in the northern city of Lille, 78-year-old Le Pen for the first time brought environmental issues into his campaign, though the underlying message was still laced with allusions to the ills of immigration and the collusion against him from "the cartel of ministers and ex-ministers who have governed us for 30 years".
In an appeal to the concerns of the far left, Le Pen called on the "seven million" poor people in France to "wake up to the global tragedy" caused by "planetary financial capitalism led by a few predators whose only target is double-digit profit in a nation called Money".
In a departure from firmly anti-foreigner rhetoric, he said: "We shouldn't blame immigrants for these policies. Those who bear the exclusive responsibility are French politicians [of the mainstream parties] who are today represented by the candidates Royal, Sarkozy and Bayrou, disguised in their First Communion outfits."
On Saturday, as anti-racism campaigners staged a demonstration in Lille, Martine Le Pen outlined her father's manifesto and told journalists: "It is clear that in the 1980s, the National Front was inspired by financial liberalism. Today it is much more difficult to define our programme.
"It's probably much more social.
"We need to face up to the ravages of ultra-capitalism on the salaried people of our country by rooting solidarity in nationality."
The National Front wants "a fiscal shock" that would reduce income tax revenue by €29 billion ($54 billion) and lead to the introduction of an upper tax bracket of 20 per cent.
It would claw back funds by not replacing 250,000 retiring civil servants over five years, scrapping €6 billion of subsidies to business and a range of social help for non-nationals.
The party wants to scrap healthcare for illegal immigrants, abolish immigrants' minimum-wage entitlement and limit child benefit to French nationals, measures which it claims would save €18.5 billion.
However, the party is no longer calling for a return to the franc or for France to leave the European Union. Yesterday, Le Pen saw a firm place for France in the international community and suggested that he would be "the President who in September 2007 will go to the UN General Assembly with an audacious plan for the joint management of four resources: water, food, basic medication and education".
In a further shift in style, Le Pen quoted from Alice in Wonderland and mused briefly about the beauty of little flowers and grazing sheep returning to lava-covered slopes after a volcanic eruption. "It is the lesson of Mt Etna. Life always triumphs in the end. The god of the ants and the god of the stars will give us, with you, victory. Because I am the candidate of life."
The National Front claims Le Pen is capable of repeating his feat in the first round of the 2002 presidential elections where he secured more votes than socialist party candidate Lionel Jospin and got into a second-round run-off with Jacques Chirac.
But for the moment it is still unclear whether the veteran politician will make it into the race. He has admitted that he is struggling to secure the endorsements of 500 elected officials (mainly MPs and town hall politicians) that the Constitutional Council requires from each candidate by March 16.
- INDEPENDENT
