According to former leader Marine Le Pen, France’s far-right, nationalist Rassemblement National (RN) has already put together a team of ministers and is on the verge of taking over the government.
“This government will be complete, competent and made up of people from the National Rally, people who campaigned with us and people from civil society,” Le Pen said in an interview with public broadcaster France Inter on Tuesday.
The 55-year-old nationalist politician was responding to claims that her party does not have enough qualified personnel to govern.
Le Pen said she did not want to be part of a government herself, but that she was prepared to take over the chairmanship of the parliamentary group in the National Assembly.
The RN wants to govern with a clear majority in parliament, Le Pen said. “We cannot accept to enter into government if we cannot act,” she stressed. “We want to govern so that things are clear.”
If there were not enough seats for a majority, her party would convince conservative MPs and other parties to join the government, Le Pen said.
She accused the president Emmanuel Macron to block the RN from the second round of next Sunday’s elections by strategically withdrawing candidates from constituencies.
Macron “is doing everything he can today to thwart the democratic process,” Le Pen said.
After the early parliamentary elections, Le Pen hopes for early presidential elections “as soon as possible” to continue the political reorganization of her party.
Should Macron resign, the RN “will face this presidential battle with great enthusiasm,” she said. The next presidential elections are not scheduled until 2027.
Le Pen said she needed the legitimacy of presidential elections to pass certain laws, apparently referring to her call to ban headscarves in public and impose fines for violations.
The RN leader went on to say that she would ban people with dual nationality from certain public positions and privatise the public broadcaster if she came to power: “We believe that in a great democracy the state should not have control over part of the media.”
In the first round of last weekend’s parliamentary elections, the RN showed the strongest results, ahead of a new left-wing alliance, with Macron’s centrist camp finishing in third place.
However, the composition of the National Assembly will only be determined in the decisive second round of voting on Sunday.
